38-year old Caribbean batsman Chris Gayle is currently in dangerous form with the bat in the ongoing IPL 2018. While the left-handed batsman is playing this IPL season for Kings XI Punjab (KXIP), he wants to win this trophy as well as the next year’s ICC Cricket World Cup too.
Chris Gayle’s former IPL franchise Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) had not retained him for this season. However, he was snapped up by Bollywood actress Preity Zinta co-owned franchise team KXIP for the base price of INR 2 crores. Gayle was not in the playing XI during the first two matches of this season.
Since he was included in the squad, he is in the destructive form with the bat. Playing only four games in this season, Gayle has already scored 252 runs with 126 batting average and 161.53 batting strike-rate. He has scored one century and two half-centuries in this season as he scored three consecutive fifty-plus scores in this season.
While everyone is now taking the left-handed destructive batsman seriously, Gayle said that his present target is to win the IPL. Till the date, neither KXIP nor Chris Gayle has won the IPL trophy.
During a recent chat with TOI Sports, when the experienced Jamaican batsman was asked about his next goal, he replied, “Just two things: winning the IPL this year and the World Cup for West Indies next year. I believe West Indies have a big chance of winning the World Cup in 2019. I know we struggled in the qualifiers but now that we’ve made it, our next aim is to win it. But right now it’s definitely the IPL. KXIP have never won it. Our owner Preity Zinta is so fantastic, so enthusiastic. The way she roots for her players is just amazing and I think she needs to lift the IPL trophy this year.”
Two-time World cup champions Windies had failed to qualify directly for the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup as they had to play in the 2018 World Cup Qualifier with the other lower-ranking teams. Though Windies secured their place for the next year’s ICC Cricket World Cup through that qualifier tournament by reaching in the final, they struggled in the whole tournament. While Afghanistan beat them twice in that tournament including final (excluding the warm-up game), Windies was just lucky to escape against Scotland.
However, Gayle is not worried on the team’s struggling performance in that tournament and looking for the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup where he believes that they can win the tournament by performing better against the strongest opponents.
Gayle also spoke out about his non-retention by RCB for IPL 2018. The left-handed attacking Caribbean batsman revealed that RCB told him that he will be retained but they never called back further.
He said on that, “I was their biggest draw. It was disappointing from that end because they had called me. They wanted me in the team and I was told that I will be retained. But they never called back after that. So that gave me the impression that they didn’t want me and it’s fine.”
Gayle further added that he was in wonderful form in CPL and BPL and his stats were very strong. In this context, Gayle scored 485 runs and 376 runs in the BPL and CPL respectively.
Talking about that, Gayle said, “As I said, I can’t fight with anyone. I think I had a wonderful CPL and BPL – where I scored two centuries for my side Rangpur Riders. The stats don’t lie: 21 centuries, most number of sixes. If that doesn’t put a stamp on brand Chris Gayle, I don’t know what will.”
