DEREK PRINGLE

By posting 10,000 runs in Twenty20 cricket, Chris Gayle has taken a format still lingering in novelty firmly into the mainstream. It is a fitting symbiosis, both having needed the other as they swept aside cricket’s old world values in a whirl of fame, wealth and bling.
For Gayle, T20 has probably been the pre-eminent form of cricket for a while now, bringing him riches and renown beyond his wildest fantasies as a ‘mere’ West Indies cricketer. Like a batting Darth Vader, he has bestridden the shortest game like a malign colossus, wiel...