BANGALORE, INDIA // Chris Gayle had been here before, in his first season with Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB). Having failed to find a team for the 2011 Indian Premier League (IPL) season, he was back home in the Caribbean when Dirk Nannes suffered a side strain. Instead of getting another bowler as replacement, Bangalore opted for Gayle.
In his first eight innings that season, he pummelled 608 runs. The final, against Chennai Super Kings at Chepauk, was another matter. After Murali Vijay’s blistering 95 propelled the home team to 205, Gayle lasted just three balls before edging a skiddy delivery from R Ashwin to MS Dhoni behind the stumps. Bangalore would go on to lose by 58 runs.
In the next two seasons, Gayle made 733 and 708 runs, including a 30-ball century against Pune Warriors. But with the support cast inconsistent, Bangalore didn’t even make the play-offs. Gayle, however, revelled in the IPL fishbowl, and has admitted as much in Six Machine, his autobiography.
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“It’s like nothing else cricket has ever seen,” he says. “Owners want the best players in their team, and if you’re a star player you will be treated like a Bollywood hero. And that makes you want to deliver — to stand out by performing as well, to win titles, to live up to the expectations.”
Delivery had been a problem this season. Gayle started the season with scores of 1 and 0, before flying back to Jamaica for the birth of his daughter. Things got no better when he returned. His next three innings were 7, 5 and 6. It was only with Bangalore facing must-win scenarios at the end of the league phase that the old magic started to return.
He clubbed 49 from 31 balls against Kolkata, and then 73 from 32 against Kings XI Punjab. But with scores of 1 and 9 in the next two matches, he went into the final with just 151 runs to his name. Only in 2014, when he made 196 in nine innings, had he endured such a lean run in the IPL.
On Sunday night, it was as though the clocks had been wound back to 2011. Needing a mammoth 209 for victory, Gayle took just four deliveries to calibrate his sights.
A length ball from Barinder Sran was muscled over long-on for six. After that, Virat Kohli, who finished the tournament with a scarcely believable 973 runs, astutely turned over the strike as often as he could.
In the half-century partnership, Kohli’s contribution was 6. By the time Bangalore raced to 100 in just nine overs, Kohli’s share was 20. By then, Gayle was in his element, driving, pulling and lofting straight. In Twenty20 cricket though, momentum shifts can be as sudden and violent as an exocet into the stands.
Bangalore had 114 on the board in just 10.3 overs when Gayle sliced Ben Cutting to third man. Of the 38 balls he faced, eight had cleared the rope, and his 76 looked like it would be a tournament-winning hand.
Not so. For once, Kohli didn’t see a chase through, inside-edging Sran on to his stumps. AB de Villiers, whose unbeaten 79 against Gujarat Lions had sealed Bangalore’s place in the final, miscued Bipul Sharma to Moises Henriques, and the support cast simply wasn’t up to the task.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mustafizur Rahman closed things off with some aplomb after Ben Cutting — man of the match for his 15-ball 39 and bowling figures of two-for-35 — had cleaned up KL Rahul with a slower delivery.
Gayle was his usual relaxed and smiling self at the presentation, but will know that such a chance may not come again. Bangalore won six of their last seven league games to make the play-offs, with De Villiers supplementing Kohli’s run feast with 687 of his own.
They played both knockout matches at home, but still couldn’t get over the line. Maybe, as is the case with Atletico Madrid’s Paseo de Los Melancolicos, the street outside the Chinnaswamy Stadium should be named Walk of the Melancholy.
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Indoor cricket World Cup:
Insportz, Dubai, September 16-23
UAE fixtures:
Men
Saturday, September 16 – 1.45pm, v New Zealand
Sunday, September 17 – 10.30am, v Australia; 3.45pm, v South Africa
Monday, September 18 – 2pm, v England; 7.15pm, v India
Tuesday, September 19 – 12.15pm, v Singapore; 5.30pm, v Sri Lanka
Thursday, September 21 – 2pm v Malaysia
Friday, September 22 – 3.30pm, semi-final
Saturday, September 23 – 3pm, grand final
Women
Saturday, September 16 – 5.15pm, v Australia
Sunday, September 17 – 2pm, v South Africa; 7.15pm, v New Zealand
Monday, September 18 – 5.30pm, v England
Tuesday, September 19 – 10.30am, v New Zealand; 3.45pm, v South Africa
Thursday, September 21 – 12.15pm, v Australia
Friday, September 22 – 1.30pm, semi-final
Saturday, September 23 – 1pm, grand final
Living in...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
THE CLOWN OF GAZA
Director: Abdulrahman Sabbah
Starring: Alaa Meqdad
Rating: 4/5
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
UK-EU trade at a glance
EU fishing vessels guaranteed access to UK waters for 12 years
Co-operation on security initiatives and procurement of defence products
Youth experience scheme to work, study or volunteer in UK and EU countries
Smoother border management with use of e-gates
Cutting red tape on import and export of food
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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