Gayle’s Goliath beats SA’s David in first T20

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Newlands

SOMETIMES, Goliath wins. Like he did at Newlands on Friday night, when Chris Gayle smashed West Indies to victory over SA in the first T20.

In a match strewn with false starts and mediocre performances, Gayle towered over everything like the giant of this format that he is to score almost half the runs the visitors needed to win by four wickets.

SA totalled an anemic 165/4, which the visitors hauled in with four balls to spare.

Gayle drilled his 77 off 31 balls, sending five of them screaming to the boundary for four and another eight arching into the night sky for six. That left just nine runs that he actually ran.

Kagiso Rabada bore the brunt of Gayle’s early assault, which saw the left-hander smash six, six, four, six and four off consecutive deliveries he faced from the 19-year-old.

It was always going to take something special to remove the belligerent Jamaican from the crease. That duly came, but the 11th over is too late to stop Gayle from putting West Indies on a highway to victory.

In the seventh over, Imran Tahir showed what he could do by trapping Marlon Samuels in front with his first delivery of the match and conceding just three runs.

Gayle smacked Tahir for three sixes in the space of six balls, but then he tried to reverse sweep the leg spinner and gloved the ball.

Behind the stumps, Morne van Wyk somehow moved the right way despite Gayle’s change of direction and only just held the catch in the tips of his gloves.

Tahir also cleaned up the rest of West Indies’ top order - Devon Smith and Marlon Samuels - to finish with the sparkling figures of 3/28.

West Indies lost focus after Gayle’s dismissal, and with it four wickets for 17 runs before Kieron Pollard mowed David Wiese through midwicket to clinch the win.

But Gayle had given them the confidence to know that they could do so and still chalk up the win.

The closest any South African came to affording the home side that kind of reassurance was while Rilee Rossouw was compiling his undefeated 51 off 40 balls.

Sadly for SA, on the night they needed more than David and his slingshot.

Perhaps the Wanderers will have an AK47 warmed up and waiting when the series resumes on Sunday.