Chris Gayle: Before the start of IPL 2023 Royal Challengers Bangalore i.e. RCB honored two of its legends RCB Hall of Fame. One of these two giants is AB de Villiers and the other is Chris Gayle. In his honour, RCB organized an event, named RCB Unbox Event. On this occasion, Chris Gayle recalled his first IPL century and told how Kohli helped him in scoring his first century in IPL.
Chris Gayle said on this special event of RCB, “When I scored 98 in my first match for RCB, Virat Kohli blocked a few consecutive balls so that I could score my first IPL century.” Let us inform you that Chris Gayle scored his first IPL century against KKR in 2011 while playing for RCB. Batting first in that match, KKR scored 171 runs in 20 overs. Gayle smashed that target and scored an unbeaten century for RCB with 102 runs off 55 balls. Along with them Tillakaratne Dilshan 38 and Virat also played unbeaten innings with 30 runs.
Virat assisted Gayle in the first century
RCB won the match in the first ball of the 19th over, but Virat could have won the match only in the second ball of the 18th over, but he didn’t. Virat hits a four off the first ball of the 18th over. After that RCB needed just 2 runs to win and Gayle was on a non-strike, 98 not out. After that, Kohli blocked 6 balls in a row and did not score a run. Out of these 6 balls, one ball is wide. Gayle hit a four on the first ball of the next over to give his team victory and also completed his first century in the IPL.
After that first century, Chris Gayle scored several centuries for RCB and created several IPL records to his name. RCB honored him with a Hall of Fame honor and also paid tribute to him by retiring his jersey number 333 permanently.
Also Read: Five Rohit Sharma became the sixth Indian to score 17000 runs in international cricket and created a world record