The Laughing Cavalier

Coming from the original Master Blaster himself, the comparison was flattering but factual. Chris Gayle, said Sir Vivian Richards, 'showed glimpses of the great Clive Lloyd' during his prolific scoring in the seven One-Day Internationals in India in November. 'He hits the ball as hard as Clive did and is gifted with the same immaculate timing,' Richards added.

The similarities do not start and end there. Like Lloyd, Gayle is left-handed and a towering six feet four inches, giving him the essential advantage of reach. Yet, for all his excellence, Lloyd never managed three hundreds in a single one-day series as Gayle did in India. Mark Waugh, Desmond Haynes, Zaheer Abbas and Saeed Anwar are the only others to have done so.

The power and sense of timing that Richards recognised were evident in the Indian series in a strike-rate of 94.98 runs per 100 balls, and the 13 long sixes that featured in his seven innings. Gayle is 23 years old and would require luck, stamina, good health and selectorial understanding to come close to Lloyd's haul of 110 Test caps and 7,515 runs when he retired in 1985, aged 40. But he has made a promising start.

In difficult times, when the desperate search for worthy players has caused constant chopping and changing, he has remained constant as the West Indies opening batsman for 20 consecutive Tests and 43 One-Day Internationals. His statistics in the longer game are modest but he already has a Test double-hundred to his name - 204 against New Zealand in Grenada's inaugural Test in June - and West Indies coach Roger Harper was enthusiastic over Gayle's improvement on the testing Indian tour.

'I was impressed with Chris in the one-day series especially,' Harper said. 'He showed a tremendous amount of maturity, adjustment and understanding of what the team requires from him. It wasn't just because of the runs he scored but the manner in which he scored them. I have criticised him for getting to half-centuries and giving his wicket away. Now he blazed away for the first 15 overs to take advantage of the field restrictions, then throttled back and batted us into the 40th over and beyond, and got hundreds.'

The change was evident in the final match of the preceding Test series in Calcutta. Gayle's response to a first-innings deficit of 139 in the previous Test in Chennai had been a wild slash at Javagal Srinath's fourth ball, which sailed into third man's lap. Suitably chastened, he spent five and a half hours over 88 in his next innings, one half of an opening partnership of 172 with his fellow Jamaican left-hander Wavell Hinds. It set the West Indies on their way to a total of 497 and a revival of spirit after heavy defeats in the first two Tests.

Gayle was one of the group of young batsmen responsible for a 4-3 triumph in the one-day series which was a significant achievement for a team with an abysmal habit of collapsing overseas. Hinds, 26, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Marlon Samuels, both 22, and Ricardo Powell, 24, are the others on whom West Indies are depending to lift them out of their prolonged decline.

Greater challenges lie ahead for them all in the World Cup on the bouncier pitches of South Africa and in the series against the mighty Australians immediately afterwards in the Caribbean. For Gayle especially, there are still technical frailties to be overcome, the youthful impetuosity of Chennai to be curbed.

His sluggish footwork renders him even more vulnerable than most left-handers to the ball slanted across him. It was exploited by the South Africans in the West Indies in 2000/01 when he was caught between 'keeper and gully seven times in 10 innings. Yet an average of 32.6 against Shaun Pollock, Allan Donald and Jacques Kallis in his first full series, aged 21, was hardly an abject failure.

He stamped his mark soon afterwards with a phenomenal tour of Zimbabwe and Kenya during which he had no mercy on lesser bowling. He plundered his highest first-class score, 259 not out against a Zimbabwe President's XI, his maiden Test hundred, an innings of 175 including 34 fours at Bulawayo, and his first One-Day International hundred, 152 against Kenya in Nairobi.

Where he did come unstuck was later in 2001 in Sri Lanka against Chaminda Vaas' wily left-arm swing. Feet cemented to the crease, Gayle fell to him five times in six innings, the last three for ducks. Usually, impatient selectors might have quickly discarded him but they recognised this as a learning experience. They have retained him since and are gradually seeing their confidence vindicated.

Gayle has graduated through a system that now makes it rare for talented West Indians to arrive on the international stage unannounced, as they once did. He has gone from West Indies Under-19s to A team to the senior side. He has had the double advantage of a large and supportive family, and schooling at Courtney Walsh's alma mater in Kingston, Excelsior High. His family live within walking distance of one of Kingston's premier clubs, Lucas, cricketing home of the great George Headley. Four of his brothers were capable club cricketers, one of whom preceded him into the Jamaica junior team. There was, and is, never any shortage of encouragement.

A hint of what was to follow came in the Under-19 World Cup in South Africa in 1997/98. Hurriedly drafted in as one of the replacements for seven players the West Indies Cricket Board belatedly discovered were too old, Gayle was the second-highest scorer in the tournament, hitting 141 out of a total of 243 for 8 in the Plate Final against Bangladesh.

Two years later, aged 20, he was in the Test team for the home series against Zimbabwe and Pakistan, and he then toured England in the summer of 2000. Shifted around the order from number six to opener, he was unsettled. He was dropped after three disappointing Tests in the Caribbean, and also after the First Test in England when he fell to Darren Gough for an eight-ball duck in West Indies' only innings at Edgbaston.

The high point of his tour was not with the bat but with the ball. He was entrusted by his captain, Jimmy Adams, with the last over of the NatWest Series match at Trent Bridge. England needed four to win with three wickets standing and Alec Stewart unbeaten on 100. They progressed no further. Paul Franks was run out and Gayle, calmly sending down flat, full-length off-spin, promptly bowled Gough and had Alan Mullally lbw.

This showed a nonchalance that has made Gayle the bowler to whom current captain Carl Hooper often turns in the closing overs of a one-day innings. It is reflected in his impish sense of fun and generally laid back, typically Caribbean approach. When there is laughter from the young men in maroon polo shirts on the plane or during a tense period in the middle, it is a fair bet that Gayle has had something to do with it.

Sometimes this characteristic can be misinterpreted. When he was omitted from the tour of Australia in 2000/01, the chairman of selectors Mike Findlay cited an 'attitudinal problem' as part of the reason. 'I don't know what's the situation there,' was Gayle's puzzled reaction at the time. He proceeded to demand his place back with a record 945 runs at an average of 63 in the subsequent Busta Cup domestic first-class tournament. He has not been out of the team since.

After his exploits in India, Hooper has identified him as critical to West Indies' hopes of mounting a genuine bid for the World Cup that they once considered to be theirs by right. 'Chris can be a demoralising batsman for bowlers, for not only is he a big hitter, he also has cultivated the habit of concentrating for long periods,' said Hooper. 'He is the right type of batsman to provide momentum when up against a big total early in the innings and is also extremely good in setting up a total that can be defended.'

Not to mention his effective late-innings bowling and his ability to break the tension with a little Jamaican fun.