Bracing up for a new era

From the moment Chris Gayle descends to the lobby of his London hotel it appears he does not want to be there. He does not want to be in chilly England, and he does not want to be up early when his preferred habit is to sleep in until 2pm. Then the list continues, and he admits that he does not want to be West Indies captain anymore and that he does not particularly care for Test cricket.
“I wouldn't be so sad,” says Gayle when asked how he would feel if Test cricket were to die out. He prefers Twenty20 over the traditional game. Of the captaincy he is similarly blasé. “To be honest with you there's a possibility I might give it up - I will be giving it up, shortly.”
These statements do not come tumbling out; instead they are revealed over the course of an hour that begins with a moody face and the unusual sight of a huge man sipping hot chocolate. “Because it's sweet,” he says, “and I'm sweet.” For the self-confessed moody captain, the hot sugary drink works wonders and Gayle's face emerges from the gloom.
And what a gloomy week it has been. Since arriving only two days before the first Test to a storm of criticism — he was playing in the Indian Premier League, — his West Indies side went on to lose the first Test at Lord's by 10 wickets inside three days.
“Yeah, it's definitely been a rough week,” he says, “From when I landed in England it's been rough and when we lost the game it's been even tougher. We were depressed,” he says.
As captain, the 29-year old Jamaican was the inevitable focal point for the blame, a fact that he notes bitterly. “It wouldn't have been a big deal,” he says, if he hadn't been captain.
“That's how life is. All eyes on you, and all things point to you. Once things don't go well fingers going to point.”
“At the time when I was asked (in 2007) I didn't want to be the captain.” Gayle says he was persuaded into the job on a temporary basis, standing in for the injured Ramnaresh Sarwan.
“That's when it all started. We won the series and then I said to them whenever Sarwan is fully fit, I am ready to step down. Maybe they saw something different, something totally different,” he muses, “and they asked me to be captain.”
“I thought hard about it. I didn't want to be captain I wanted to have more free time. I didn't want that added pressure at that particular time, but they actually insist, insist, insist, so I said OK. So I thought just get on with it.”
In fact, it could be argued that the finger pointing should be at the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) whose hastily arranged England tour clashed with pre-existing IPL arrangements. When the fall-out hit, Gayle was an easy scapegoat. Perhaps, the real issue here is the changing face of the international cricket season. For Gayle the fixture congestion will become ever more acute as Twenty20 grows in stature and dominates the calender. He doesn't hold much truck with traditionalists like Andrew Strauss. “The next couple years I'm sure things are going to be like that. This year it's really jam-packed … we've been on the road 24/7 and you don't get no time off, back and forth, back and forth.”
Softly spoken off the field, he is often described as a "destroyer" on it. But Gayle is venerable in his admission that perhaps he is not cut out for solving the West Indies' long-standing problems of leadership. As the older generation bemoan this flashy new generation of players, with their $20m matches, and big IPL salaries, Gayle quietly reflects that his predecessors don't understand the burden of losing.
“In their time they dominated Test cricket. They don't know what it is like actually to lose and how to deal with it. They don't know how to deal with losing, and then try and get a couple wins under our belt.”
It is a thought expressed with great sadness. And perhaps it is understandable then why Gayle feels such enthusiasm to embark on a new Twenty20 era, free from the heavy weight of the West Indies' illustrious Test winning past.