Universe Boss Chris Gayle to retire from ODIs after World Cup this year

Windies star Chris Gayle has decided to bring down curtains on his illustrious One-Day International career. The opening batsman, on Sunday, announced he would retire from the 50-over format following the conclusion of the upcoming ICC World Cup in England and Wales this summer.

Windies Cricket confirmed the news on Twitter on Sunday. “Talismanic WINDIES batsman, Chris Gayle, has announced he will retire from One-Day Internationals following the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 England & Wales,” read the statement from the cricket board.

Gayle was recently recalled for Windies’ upcoming five-match ODI series against England at home, starting on February 20 in Barbados. The hard-hitting batsman last played for West Indies during the home ODI series against Bangladesh in July 2018 and had made himself unavailable for the tours of India and Bangladesh in order to play the Afghanistan Premier League and the T10 League.

Despite being one of the Windies’ all-time greats, Gayle along with several other big names had fallen out of favour with his cricket board. As a result, he was not a regular member of the team in the last few years. After playing in the 2015 World Cup, where he had scored a double century, he had made his comeback two years later during the tour of England in July 2017.  Last year, he had helped Windies make it to the World Cup by playing in the qualifiers.

The retirement, nonetheless, was very much on the cards for the southpaw. At 39, Gayle had already hinted that the 2019 World Cup would be his last swansong. In October last year, he had announced his retirement from List A games, scoring a century and receiving a guard of honour while playing his last game for Jamaica.

Glorious career:

Despite the latter part of his career not panning out in an expected manner, Gayle can look back fondly at it. He remains the only batsman to complete the triple feat of scoring a century in T20I cricket, a double century in ODI cricket, and a triple century in Test cricket. In 2004, he had helped Windies win the Champions Trophy in addition to helping them lift the World T20 title twice.

In his illustrious ODI career, Gayle has so far scored 9,727 runs in 284 matches with the help of 23 tons.

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