Gayle was T20’s poster boy right from the start, nailing his short-form colours to the mast with his infamous, “I wouldn’t be sad” reply to the hypothetical question: what if Test cricket died?
Wisden editor Lawrence Booth said: “The cover of Wisden 2017 shows him playing a reverse sweep – the kind of unorthodoxy that would once have been frowned upon, but is now part of batting’s bread and butter.”