Who is a better T20 player: Chris Gayle or Virat Kohli?
Chris Gayle recently edged Virat Kohli past to go into another round of the Greatest T20 cricketer poll organized by a popular cricket website. Kohli’s fans generated a Twitter storm that trended a tag against the site that housed Kohli’s poll with screenshots leading at the time of the deadline. The website straightened out the controversy and agreed to reopen the vote to please the public. Gayle also dominated the re-poll and ended up receiving 75% of the overall votes this time.
Gayle’s is the one name that sits on both of these T20s lists. He has the most runs, hundreds, sixes, highest score, and fastest hundreds. By the time T20 cricket took root, he was an established international star, but with his consistent big scoring all over the world, it is a format he made his own.
He’s the first to cross the 10,000-mark in T20s, and still has a lead of over 3,000 top runs. His 22 hundred are 14 more than the next highest, and he may be the first to hit a thousand sixes. He’s won two T20 World Cups and has impressive tournament numbers.
In the 2011 IPL, when he joined Royal Challengers Bangalore as a replacement player, Gayle’s star turn in the T20 Leagues world began. As the highest run-scorer-a feat he would repeat in 2012-he finished the season and was named the MVP as his team reached the final. He led Jamaica Tallawahs to the title in the inaugural CPL in 2013, following a third straight IPL season in which he made 600-plus runs.
He gained another award in 2016 and is the League’s top run-scorer. Gayle is past his peak at 40, but he still has a resume that’s going to take some beating.
Virat Kohli is the only player to average over 40 of those running 5000-plus T20, the success of Kohli is due to a reliable technique combined with a batting philosophy that minimizes risk. That average moves to over 50 in T20Is, a format in which he is the top scorer on the run.
He’s also the IPL’s most prolific run-scorer and played in the 2011 and 2016 campaigns of the Royal Challengers Bangalore, where they reached the final.
A record 973 runs at an average of 81.08 and a strike rate of 152.03 in the 2016 IPL, the RCB captain-a position he took over before the 2013 season; he also scored four of his five T20 hundred that season. He was also the winning representative in the 2014 and 2016 T20 World Cups. Still, his personal best in those tournaments (77 against Sri Lanka in 2014 final and 89 against West Indies in the 2016 semi-final) resulted in knockout defeats.
These polls are likely to overshadow a player’s reputation on certain occasions, rather than what they’ve accomplished. It’s one of the reasons why players from the Indian subcontinent in particular typically win majority polls. Gayle winning the survey may be a surprise considering these factors, but there is no question that the West Indian remains at the top of the T20 format as well as the IPL.
