I remember Gayle smoking a drive high over extra-cover; and I think there were at least two that were flicked over backward square. Mostly, his sixes were lifted high in the range from straight down the ground through midwicket, but they ran so quickly into each other that it is difficult seeing them as individual events. In contrast, the images of the four sixes Viv Richards blitzed more than three decades ago, 1983 to be exact, to force an unlikely test victory against India at Sabina park remains with me to this day. I also remember the six Jeffrey Dujon stroked from the end that houses the George Headley stand off a Mohinder Amarnath full-toss to seal the win.
I remember them not because they were more spectacular than Gayle’s or de Villiers or Rohit’s. I remember because they were as rare and as special as a trustworthy politician, often generating the kind of enthusiastic reaction that I saw recently from a TV weatherman who lost all control celebrating the unusual phenomenon of thundersnow.
