Chris Gayle – welcome back to Test Cricket

                                 

 If there was one man who was in pseudo hibernation in the world cricket fraternity it was Christopher Henry Gayle of West Indies. I say it as pseudo hibernation because he has been playing cricket all around the world except for his own country due to reasons which we don’t want to debate upon at present as he is back in his countries jersey.

Called back into the West Indian team after about more than a year, for the England tour of the Windies, he was at his best right from the word “go” notching up consistent scores in every other innings since his arrival into the international stage .

After scoring well in his first ODI (53 against England) and T20 (85 against New Zealand) it was time for his big score in his first Test as well and he delivered exactly that with a well built 150 off 206 balls against New Zealand at Antigua. It was a perfect comeback innings which he and his team would have wanted.

Coming into bat after New Zealand posted 351 on board, he was in murderous mood right from the start of the innings as he took  Chris Martin to cleaners in the very first over of the match as he thrashed him for four consecutive boundaries and from then on it was no looking back as he effortlessly got the runs  throughout the innings and made New Zealand pay for dropping him twice.

He along with Powell laid a perfect foundation for the West Indies with a huge 250 plus opening stand and put their team in a strong position to bat the opposition out of the match. Powell in the process also got his first test century.

Gayle, the senior pro, returning to the West indies fold will certainly do better to their team’s not so good fortunes. West Indies have been relying on the only senior guy in the team, Chanderpaul,  for most of the times but now with Gayle’s addition the team will look forward to do better in the present series and also in the tours ahead which includes the World T20 as well, the tournament in which West Indies are tipped to be the favorites.

Finally. Gayle’s return is not just a happy sign for West indies fans but also for the cricket fans around the world as he is a player to watch out for in every format especially T20′s.

virat kohli in golden marathon

     Its been a marathon golden run for Virat Kohli, who has been in great form from a long time which continued even after a long break till Friday's match against Sri Lanka in hambantota in which he made his third consecutive century against the Lankans.
  
     there were no signs of rustiness of break in virat's innings as he looked at ease right from the start of the innings. he was accumulating runs at will and at brisk pace and kept the scoreboard ticking. he was ably supported by the Delhi dasher virender sehwag who missed out on a century himself by a whisker. their partnership laid the foundation for a mammoth total of 314 and put India on course for their first win after the break from cricket.

     this knock of 106 against lanka also makes him the fastest player in the world to get to 12 ODI centuries in 83 innings. the fact that the difference between him and the next best is 30 innings just goes to show his stupendous rise to the top of the ODI cricket.

     he has been India's highest run getter for more than two years now. and is also in top three run getter in ODI's for this year. this century was his fourth in five innings, and his fifth successive fifty-plus score, equaling the Indian record. these numbers just reflect his great consistency over a period of time.

     for someone who is tipped to become the next Dependable in the Indian test team this consistency is just a testament of his great temperament and supplements his contender ship to the test no.3 spot. and if he continues in the same form there is no doubt he will go on to become one of the greats of limited overs cricket and might challenge his fellow team mate sachin tendulkar for the ODI records as he has amassed 12 hundreds in no time with a more than 50% conversion rate and a strike rate of around 87.