"It's no secret. Yes, he has got me out the majority of times in Test cricket whenever I play against Sri Lanka." This was Chris Gayle's honest admission after West Indies lost the first Test against Sri Lanka in Guyana. The bowler he was referring to was Chaminda Vaas, who won the Man-of-the-Match award in the game and was probably the reason why Gayle dropped down to No. 6 in the batting order in the second innings.
For a batsman of his ability, the manner in which Gayle has been dominated by Vaas is amazing. It isn't only the fact that he has fallen to Vaas seven times in six Tests; all seven dismissals have come about early in his innings, in Vaas' first spell. In those seven innings, Gayle has scored a grand total of ten runs, and the last five dismissals have all been for ducks, over three different series.
Thanks largely to Vaas, Gayle averages a paltry 16.30 against Sri Lanka, and his unbeaten 51 in the second innings in Guyana was his first 50-plus score against them in 11 innings. His early departures have also meant he has hardly faced Muttiah Muralitharan in Tests: in all he has played 92 deliveries from Murali, 76 of which were during the course of his defiant innings at the Providence Stadium.
Though Gayle has been all at sea against Vaas, he hasn't necessarily struggled against all left-arm seam-and-swing bowlers - his overall average against them since July 2001 is a fairly reasonable 29.37, though it's still a fair way lower than his career average.
While Gayle averages 1.43 in the seven Test innings in which he has been dismissed by Vaas, his overall average against him - taking into account all innings, including those in which Vaas hasn't dismissed him - isn't much better. In 137 deliveries Gayle has only scored 37 runs off Vaas, which is very unusual for a batsman of his aggressive intent, and is further proof of Vaas' complete stranglehold over him.
Other left-arm fast bowlers haven't replicated Vaas' success against Gayle, though. Zaheer Khan has had the better of Gayle, dismissing him five times at an average of 14.40, but most of the others have come off second best: Ryan Sidebottom and James Franklin have bowled more than ten overs at Gayle for just one dismissal, while Ashish Nehra has bowled 172 wicketless deliveries at him.
Compared to other kinds of bowlers, though, left-arm seamers have been far more successful against Gayle. Their right-arm counterparts concede nearly 40 runs per dismissal, while the spinners have fared far worse.
The list of other bowlers who have had the better of Gayle include four right-arm fast bowlers and Anil Kumble. Makhaya Ntini and Steve Harmison have dismissed Gayle plenty of times, but unlike Vaas, they haven't been able to keep a lid on the runs - both have conceded more than four runs per over to him. Glenn McGrath and Javagal Srinath have been more successful, strangling the runs and getting him out regularly, while Kumble has been more successful than any other spinner.
Stuck in the mid-range
The last six Test innings by Stephen Fleming were 41, 66, 34, 31, 59 and 66 - starts each time, but not a single knock that went on to something substantial. In a nutshell, his last series encapsulated Fleming's career: out of 189 innings, on 81 occasions he scored between 20 and 69, which is nearly 43% of his Test innings.
The list below is of batsmen who had the highest percentage of innings between 20 and 69 (among those who played at least 100 Test innings). Fleming finds a place, but only at No. 13. The table is headed, quite surprisingly, by Wally Hammond, who had an excellent conversion rate - 22 hundreds and 24 fifties - and who finished with a superb career average of 58.45, a far-cry from Fleming's nine centuries, 46 fifties, and an average of 40.06. Fleming's percentage is, in fact, exactly the same as Javed Miandad's, yet Miandad ended with a career average 12 runs higher, which indicates the difference between the two in the remaining 57% of their innings. Shaun Pollock has the lowest average among the batsmen in the list, while Arjuna Ranatunga and Imran Khan are the only others to average in the 30s.