The brillsomeness of Chris Gayle

I wanted to write about something else - perhaps the delightful fact that Jacob Martin will now lend his cover-driving skills to the Tihar Jail cricket team, or that charming exchange of pleasantries between SK Warne and that Dixit fellow - but this column ended up being about Chris Gayle. Why? Because Chris Gayle is unstoppable.

Chris Gayle is so tremendously magnificent, we need to make up new words to describe his awesomeness. Chris Gayle's strike rate is frobifistic. Chris Gayle generated so much power, the ball practically jaddets to the fence. When opponents see Chris Gayle walking out to bat, they simply give up and roddle. Chris Gayle is so KVLT, even Ant Sims can't help kumnubulating about him.

Chris Gayle scores runs so fast, he breaks the laws of nature. He once scored a hundred when the team total was only 64. He scored 77 off 18 deliveries in the match between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Pune Warriors - and he didn't even play in the game. It's like that whole Einstein-Rosen bridge concept, which explains how travelling faster than light could send you gambolling cheerfully through timespace, into the past and the future. Chris Gayle's runs are scored at such tremendous velocity that they are crossing multiple Einstein-Rosen bridges every day and turning up in unexpected places, such as in innings played by Shane Watson against Bangladesh. Going forward, the ICC must make provisions in the rules to include runs scored by Chris Gayle in every match played. Regardless of who is playing in them. ESPNcricinfo should have a separate Statsguru just for Chris Gayle.

Centuries want to be scored by Chris Gayle. Records want to be broken by Chris Gayle. If the first international Twenty20 double-hundred could speak, it would probably say, "Well, I'm not sure which batsman will score me first - but if I had a choice, I'd want to be blasted by Chris Gayle." Runs probably get into vicious catfights for the privilege of being hammered by Chris Gayle. I can imagine one of them calling a press conference to say, "These are the moments that make a run truly proud. I have earlier been scored by Ricky Ponting and Kevin Pietersen, but to have been the third run counted in a boundary scored by Chris Gayle is truly special."

Chris Gayle is the Chuck Norris of Rajnikanth of Don Bradman of Mr T of Upendra of Vin Diesel. He intimidates his opponents by grinning and drinking water. Or by waving at them and saying something that ostensibly could have been "Good morning, my friend", but could have been something entirely different. Chris Gayle makes King Kong pee in his pants - and King Kong doesn't even wear pants. Chris Gayle makes Ravindra Jadeja quake in his boots - and Ravindra Jadeja doesn't even play Quake.

No other player could maintain his coolness in the face of all those ridiculous "Gayle Force" and "Gayle Storm" headlines that every newspaper sub-editor, for some reason, seems to think is awfully inventive and clever, and so merits repetition for the 1000th time. Look what stupid headlines did to John Wright and Graham Onions. Neither of those gentlemen can be accused of being so cool that they make the Cryogenian geologic period look like Navjot Sidhu. But Chris Gayle manages it quite comfortably.

I could go on and on on this topic, but there's no need.