It was raining sixes at the Wankhede stadium in India where West Indies, a few minutes ago, beat England by 6 wickets with 11 balls to spare. Chris Gayle went berserk,belting 11 sixes to all parts of the ground, as well as 5 fours in a tremendous power knock where he scored a 47-ball hundred. At the end of the match, he remained not out on 100 off 48 deliveries. It was his second T20I hundred and the fastest in World T20.
West Indies won the toss and Darren Sammy chose to bowl and rely on his deep batting line-up to pull off a successful chase against England at the Wankhede.
SCORE: West Indies 183 for 4 (Gayle 100*) beat England 182 for 6 (Root 48, Russell 2-36) by six wickets
England scored of 182 looked to be a competitive total, but then there was the ‘Gayle factor’.
Chris Gayle, at 36, knows that he could be playing his last World Twenty20 and, judging by the manner in which he pulverised England at the Wankhede, he intends to go out in style. England’s bowlers began the night fretting about the dew, and ended it drenched to the skin by the sight of Gayle raining sixes into the sky.
David Hopps, writing on Cricinfo, said nobody has hit as many sixes in a World T20 innings as the 11 that Gayle dispatched in Mumbai, breaking his own record of 10 against South Africa in Johannesburg in 2007 – his only previous T20I hundred. Seven flew down the ground, the other four further along the leg-side arc and apart from a leap from Joe Root in a failed attempt to intercept the one that brought up his 50, all England’s fielders could do was watch.
England 1 Alex Hales, 2 Jason Roy, 3 Joe Root, 4 Eoin Morgan (capt), 5 Jos Buttler (wk), 6 Ben Stokes, 7 Moeen Ali, 8 Adil Rashid, 9 Chris Jordan, 10 David Willey, 11 Reece Topley
West Indies 1 Chris Gayle, 2 Johnson Charles, 3 Marlon Samuels, 4 Dwayne Bravo, 5 Denesh Ramdin (wk), 6 Andre Russell, 7 Darren Sammy (capt), 8 Carlos Brathwaite, 9 Samuel Badree, 10 Jerome Taylor, 11 Sulieman Benn
