In a great news that would bring joy to every cricket fan in the world and especially to the Big Bash League 2015-16 followers, West Indies batsman Chris Gayle is likely to be fit to play in the upcoming season of BBL. The batsman announced last week that he will be undergoing a surgery in August in order to help him get rid of the back problem that has plagued him for last 2-3 years. Gayle is committed to playing a charity match on August 2 and after that he will go under the knife.
As for his return to cricket, he said that he may come back to competitive cricket fitness by December. This is excellent news for Australia’s premier domestic T20 competition, the Big Bash League. Gayle is contracted to the Melbourne Renegades franchise and is supposed to play for them in BBL 05.
The schedule for the Big Bash League 2015-16 can be downloaded in pdf from here.
In a recent development, the company that handles Chris Gayle’s professional commitments confirmed that the West Indian opener is in fact aiming at an October return. This given that all goes as expected with surgery and his recovery.
Chris Gayle first said about the surgery the first semifinal of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL). His team the Jamaica Tallawahs were eliminated from the competition after they were defeated by Trinidad and Tobago Red Steel in the first semifinals. The Trinidad and Tobago Red Steel won the competition after they defeated the Barbados Tridents in the final.
Commenting on the good news, the skipper of Melbourne Renegades Aaron Finch said that, “It’s huge to sign Chris Gayle, he’s someone who has dominated this format over a long period of time.” Aaron Finch opens for the Melbourne Renegades along with Chris Gayle and the two are considered to be most devastating openers in the competition.
In this year’s Indian Premier League (IPL), Chris Gayle topped the charts for his franchise the Royal Challengers Bangalore with 491 runs at an average of 40.91 and his highest score in the tournament was 117. Gayle also topped the list of maximum sixes with 38 sixes in the tournament.
Gayle then went on to set England’s domestic Twenty20 competition on fire with an undefeated 151 for Somerset and ended with 328 runs from three matches, hitting 29 sixes. Adding this to the fact that He was the top run-getter in the CPL 2015 with 430 runs and also hit the two top scores of 105 and 90* to go along with 33 sixes in 10 matches.
The Big Bash league 2015 will start on December 18 and will go until January. The matches of the competition will be aired on Network Ten in Australia and Star Sports network in India. The Live streaming of the matches can be watched online on mobile phones using the Live App of Cricket Australia. The live scores and highlights of the tournament can also be viewed on bigbash.com.au.
