Chris Gayle is exhibiting A in what’s wrong with cricket at the moment

After walking out to bat with his opening partner, rather than assuming his position at the batting crease, Chris Gayle sauntered towards the middle of the 22-yard pitch and stood there for a few moments, visualizing what was to come and practicing his trademark pull shot. He was shadow batting in the cricket ground that had become his playground.

The M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore is small and claustrophobic. e tiny boundaries, coupled with an that the pitch and the high altitude, made it a ground of extraordinary feats of batsmanship. Gayle is an enormous man – 6 feet 3 inches tall and 98kg, so broad and muscular that his upper back is hulked under the weight of his strength. As he stood in the middle of the pitch, adorned in the red of the Royal Challengers Bangalore and with the end of his black bandana trailing out of his gold helmet, his presence filled the stadium. the 40,000 people in the stands had already been whipped up into a fervent expectation of what they were about to witness: one of the most powerful batting orders ever assembled plundering runs.

Eden Gardens in Kolkata,

steeped in history and with a capacity of 90,000, is Indian cricket’s coliseum. the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, home to India’s great batsmen and demigods Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar, is Indian cricket’s cathedral. Bangalore’s M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, scene of Brendon McCullum’s seminal 158 not out in the inaugural IPL match and home to the batting galacticos of RCB, is Indian cricket’s basement nightclub. Eden Gardens and the Wankhede Stadium have more history but if you wanted a good time you’d come to the Chinnaswamy. A good time is what Gayle was about to give the capacity crowd on a sweltering Tuesday afternoon in April 2013.

After one more practice shot in the middle of the pitch, Gayle turned around and slowly walked towards the batting crease. Like the tennis legend Rafael Nadal, who would arrange his drink bottles meticulously before taking his position at the back of the court, the game was made to wait for Gayle. He even turned to slow down, the antithesis of all that T20 represented, into a dramatic act.

It took just 8.5 overs for Gayle to reach his hundred. Any delivery from Pune Warriors India’s bowlers with a hint of width was played through the off side and any ball even fractionally too straight was picked up and whipped through the leg side. Too full and he clobbered it down the ground; too short and he pulled it into the stands. the shot which took him to his century – a straight drive for six off another erroneous full toss – took chunks out of the stadium roof. Shrapnel rained down on to the outfield below as Gayle removed his helmet and sank to his knees in celebration, arms outstretched as if to say: are you not entertained? It had taken him 30 balls to score 102 runs, the fastest T20 hundred of all time.

the growth of the six in T20 mirrored the ascent of the three in the NBA,
which has more than doubled since 2000. the six, like the three in basketball, has a 50% greater pay-off than the previous highest-scoring shot, more than making up for it being harder to execute. Both the six and the three represent the marriage of the athletically spectacular and analytically shrewd. Increased use of data analysis in cricket has been one of a number of factors – alongside stronger players, bigger bats and power-hitting training – to cause a surge in the rate of six-hitting in T20. In 2012 a six was hit every 28 balls. By 2018 that had fallen to one every 20 balls.

Balls per Six in T20 Cricket by Year

• 2008 27
• 2009 28
• 2010 27
• 2011 27
• 2012 27
• 2013 25
• 2014 24
• 2015 23
• 2016 23
• 2017 21
• 2018 20

This is not a normal cyclical shift of the sort common in sport. It speaks of an altogether more fundamental change. From being regarded as the sport’s kamikaze shot, the six is now often viewed as its prudent, percentage option – simply the most efficient way to score runs. The ascent of the six in cricket was a window into how the sports data revolution is not just changing how sports teams prepare and train, but also the essence of how sports are played. Gayle has never seemed like a cricketer to pay much heed to analytics. this image, so carefully cultivated, concealed his great wisdom. More than any other player of his age, Gayle grasped that boundary hitting would be dominant in T20. And so he developed a unique batting style that revolved almost entirely around hitting fours and, especially, sixes.