Chris Gayle, who changed the face of T20 during his illustrious career, has enjoyed some of his finest moments in the Indian Premier League. The West Indies great spoke about his undying love for the Royal Challengers Bangalore fans while speaking to Robin Uthappa on ‘Home of Heroes’, on JioCinema.
After a conversation centered around his diet and how sticking to his roots helped him during his career, Gayle elaborated on his iconic 175-run knock for Bangalore against the Pune Warriors in 2013 and revealed he would have gotten a double century if not for AB de Villiers, “AB came in and scored like 30 runs in 8 balls or something like that. If the guys aren’t like ‘Chris, give him the strike’, I could have gotten 215.”
He then went on to proclaim that he set the standards, and jokingly said he should always have been given the strike. Gayle then narrated a funny story about how one of his hits ended up breaking a fan’s nose. But luckily the incident ended on a funny note.
“The ball ricocheted off the wall and hit a young girl in the nose. Immediately, I went straight to the hospital and saw her with bloody nose and bloody clothes. She was like, ‘why are you sad? Don’t worry, hit more sixes!’ That was so amazing man. She helped me feel better by telling me that even when she’s in pain she wanted me to hit more sixes. It was a touching moment. The next game, every fan had a placard saying, ‘please break my nose’, so I can come visit them in the hospital.”
Gayle’s description of the incident led to him saying that RCB fans are the best in the IPL. “RCB is one of the best fanbases I’ve experienced. When the Chinnaswamy Stadium starts chanting ‘RCB! RCB!’ It’s the best. RCB has the best fans.” Gayle also acknowledged the fans’ contribution in Chennai while Uthappa praised Kolkata.
But the prize of the best fanbase ultimately was given to Bangalore by their former star batsman.The distinguished tenure Gayle enjoyed with RCB established him as an IPL legend and he said that fans still recognize him for his time there. Despite his stints in Punjab and Kolkata, Gayle will forever be linked to RCB for some of the greatest individual batting performances put up in the tournament’s history.
Uthappa had a series of rapid-fire questions for Gayle thereafter during which he revealed Rohit Sharma is his favorite batsman to watch right now. He then tried picking between the IPL and the World Cup in terms of which competition is harder to win. “I will say the World Cup. The reason being, I have never been to a World Cup final, but I have been to an IPL final. I was this close. I was looking at it from a 50-over point-of-view. Is T20 okay? Then I guess the IPL, man. The IPL is definitely harder to win if you’re going to put the T20 World Cup in. I was thinking of the 50-over World Cup, that’s what I wanted.”
Towards the end of the conversation, Gayle had the perfect response when Uthappa asked him about the best bowler he has ever faced.
“He hasn’t been born. Every bowler is great. I have been through so many, it’s difficult to call one name the best. There’s too many good bowlers out there and too many good bowlers I have smashed. I am still waiting for the best one to bowl to me.”The conversation wrapped up with a few more questions which saw Chris talk about his jovial and funny nature, how many tattoos he has, and about his persona as the ‘Universe Boss.’