Gayle blows out of SA test series

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

THE biggest West Indian drawcard in the test series they are due to play in SA this summer was removed from the equation on Monday night when Chris Gayle was ruled out with a back injury.

A West Indies Cricket Board statement said Gayle would be replaced in the squad by Devon Smith, the leading batsman in the regional four-day tournament in the Caribbean with 309 runs from five innings.

But Gayle, the biggest hitter in the game, is the only bona fide star in the Windies’ line-up and his omission is sure to have an impact on interest in the series.

Gayle has played just five of his 103 tests in SA, but he has scored two centuries and two half-centuries in those 10 innings. However, South Africans will be able to see him in at least one more match.

“His back is giving him hell and we’ve sent him to specialists to sort it out, but I doubt he would make it through a test series,” Geoff Toyana, the coach of the Lions team Gayle is playing for in the franchise T20 competition, said on Monday night.

“We’ll rest him for the game in Kimberley (against the Knights on Wednesday) but he is going to play in the semi-final (on Sunday) and hopefully - if we win it - in the final.”

The semi - which also features the Lions and the Knights - will be played at the home ground of Wednesday’s winners.

Gayle, who has twice previously been forced by injury to pull out of playing for the Dolphins in the T20 competition, is the third-highest runscorer in the tournament this season with 242 runs from seven innings.

However, the two men above him, Henry Davids and Richard Levi, have had 10 and nine innings respectively.

The test series starts in Centurion on December 17.