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ICC CRICKET WORLD CUPFebruary 24, 2015Chris GayleCANBERRA, AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY Q. You started slowly, and then the balls started going out of the park, and as Damian Marley sang his song out in the street, "It's Murder." Talk us through that innings. CHRIS GAYLE: Yeah, it was a slow start. You know, we lost Dwayne Smith early, and then Marlon came in with only two deliveries actually bowled. He asked me what was happening out there, but I couldn't give much information. All I said was that the bowler kept the ball a bit low. But eventually, we had to attack because we didn't want to put ourselves under tremendous pressure, but that was my game plan, try and push them back as early as possible. Eventually it worked, and then in the middle period, then we can pick up things a bit further and then you can pick and choose which bowler you want to take your chances off more, and then eventually it worked. Q. Chris, it's been a fairly tough 18 months for you in 50 overs cricket, averaging 14 over 19 games. There's also been things said or tweeted in the past few days. How much does this mean to you, this innings? CHRIS GAYLE: It means a lot. You pointed out at the start, it's been a while since I've been on a run, maybe one year and a couple months now, still playing with an injury, so I've been restricted in a lot of areas, you know, preparation wise, and then showing the cricket in my my game of cricket, I didn't eventually get a chance to actually score a lot of runs, which everybody expects me to. Like I said, I hope this is a start of a new beginning. Try and build this as much as possible and then put the team in a good position, and then we look forward to it against South Africa. Q. Can you talk us through that first ball when you looked at the big screen and saw how far it looked? What was going through your mind? CHRIS GAYLE: It looked like what it looked like on the replay, I was like, oh, you're kidding me. Well, those were not the exact words, but a swear word. (Laughs.) I said, come on, not again. Eventually some umpires called it, and it was like a big relief, and then they take the ball back, gave me a run, and that's the way everything actually started. Q. You've spoken about playing with an injury and the difficulties involved in preparation for that. What keeps you going, and what do you have to do differently when you're planning with this injury, and how does it affect you when you're actually playing? CHRIS GAYLE: It's the same back injury. I've had it since last January. It can't seem to be solved, to be honest with you. It's a bit of a mind thing. I try and do a lot of massage. I'm a person that likes to go to the gym, and I've been restricted from that for a couple of months, as well. But eventually I went to the gym yesterday and did some work because I needed some. Eventually it worked out for me in the end. Listen, I'm in a comfortable situation to be honest with you. Like I said, just mentally I'm going too strong, so that's actually keeping it going to be honest with you. Q. You've got the South Africans coming up on Friday. What message do you hope your innings sends to them? CHRIS GAYLE: A double century? I don't know. You're coming up against a good team there. We toured South Africa recently. We know each other, as well. It's going to be a good could be test. It's a World Cup event now, so we're all on neutral ground, so we've got to make our best performance speak for ourselves, and hopefully can come out on top against South Africa and go one up on them in the World Cup here. Q. How much did, I guess, the tweet on the weekend, how much did that play a role in today, and where does this innings sit in your career? CHRIS GAYLE: I mean, the tweet and everything, you're disappointed to see where it actually came from and stuff. It was at a time when you're a player, you need support and you're in a World Cup event. Once you can get support from your people, it would actually be more fantastic. But negatives around, it's not needed at this particular time. Honestly to score a double century in ODI, it's right up there. Got to be the best one. Q. You didn't get the last strike towards the end, so was that a conscious decision? Were you tired? CHRIS GAYLE: I wasn't tired. But Marlon was joking I was. It was a team effort, get as big a total as much as possible. I wasn't worried. It was stretching the boundaries, and like I said, coming down to the end there, so you look to take the baton and carry it across the line. But he did a fantastic job, so I'm not too worried here. Q. Just given the last couple of games, West Indies have scored over 300 in all of your matches now. How good do you think your chances are going forward, and what do you think needs still to be looked at or worked on? CHRIS GAYLE: Yeah, that's a good positive for us, getting 300 runs. Apart from the first game, I thought our bowlers did a wonderful job. Jerome Taylor with the new ball picking up early wickets for us, put us in a good position, as well, for the captain Jason Holder, as well, backed up by. It's been fantastic, and like I said, it's a plus for our batting to be able to get 300 runs in three consecutive games, so hopefully we can actually go four for four and post a good total, whatever we're going to chase, we'll see what happens, and hopefully we can win again. Q. As you said, you have been battling this injury for over a year and I know your fans are worried that one morning you might get up and say, I've had enough. Will this double century hasten that seeing that you have achieved that now, or will it reignite some sort of passion to continue playing? CHRIS GAYLE: It will definitely ignite a lot of passion. Like I said, this is the first time since playing international cricket. I got so much messages like they all want you to do well. Around the world I feel I can entertain a lot, and the time is after the game, so they want me to actually go there and excel and do, from family members to friends to friends to teammates. Even when I was dinner last night with Sulieman Benn, he wanted to say something to me but he was like only until after, he said, you want to average 50 against these guys, and he didn't say anything else. Everybody wanted me to do well, and I'm really happy to actually get some runs to actually entertain the fans out there. I'm sure they're looking forward to this. I'm sure everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. I'm just very thankful for this. Q. Not much of a break before South Africa. Correct me if I heard you wrong on the field. I heard you say you have a score to settle with them; is that correct? Could you elaborate on that? CHRIS GAYLE: Yeah, they beat us badly in their hometown. We are on neutral grounds now, so hopefully we can get things going for us and beat South Africa here in the World Cup game. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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