Dharmasala : The pleasent weather in the hill station of Dharmasala is all set to be overtaken by a storm when Kings XI Punjab take on Royal Challengers at the picturesque Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association (HPCA) Stadium here on Tuesday.
Gayle’s absence at the nets on Monday raised a few eyebrows in the Kings Xi camp and Ryan Harris said: “Big guy isn’t here.”
Gayle has scored 436 runs from just seven matches at a whopping strike rate of 201.85 and is the only player to hit two hundreds in IPL, unbeaten 55-ball 102 against the Kolkata Knight Riders at the Eden Gardens and a 49-ball 107 against Kings XI at the Chinnaswamy stadium.
He could be the real danger man for Kings XI and their bowling coach Jason Gillespie is quite aware of it.
?No doubt, he?s in special form and it will be a challenge to bowl against Chris when he?s in this kind of form. We just need to enter
the field with the belief that we can bowl at the right areas and tie him down.
?Afterall, Chris Gayle too is a human being and he can commit mistakes. But yes, it will be foolish to overlook his abilities and leave everything to chance. We need to plan for him,? Gillespie said.
But Gillespie doesn’t want to overlook the other threats.
?Gayle certainly is their main player at the moment and we need to come up with something special against a batsman in such form. But we can?t ignore the fact that Bangalore have some really good players and we need to prepare for all of them,? he said.
Royal Challengers skipper Virat Kohli, however, refused to buy the notion that his team is over depended on Gayle.
?We don?t want to be over-dependent on Chris and at the same time, we hope he can continue in the same way for the rest of the tournament. We?ve no complaints about that,? Kohli said.