In some T20 franchise leagues, time has never been taken to set the ball rolling. Let’s look at the Indian Premier League (IPL) for example, it was only the first game of the tournament’s history where Brendon McCullum set the competition on fire with 153* in the opening game, which remained the highest individual IPL score for the longest time, broken much later with Chris Gayle’s 175* for RCB.
The same happened in the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) where we saw an individual century being scored in the first game of BPL history itself, and it was that man again, Chris Gayle. The Jamaican and former West Indian opener is a T20 legend and he’s stamped his authority in every T20 league in the world, doing so here as well when he became the first ever BPL centurion way back in BPL 2012.
Chris Gayle scores first BPL century in 2012
It’s 10th Feb 2012 and the first game of a new franchise league, where Barisal Burners won the toss and elected to field first at Mirpur. They were playing Sylhet Royals and the latter managed to put up a decent T20 score of 165/4 in their 20 overs, courtesy fifties from captain Peter Trego (62) and Bangladesh veteran, Alok Kapali (56).
Pakistan’s Yasir Arafat was the hero with the ball after he picked up the wickets of both these two half-centurions, ending with figures of 2/33 in 4 overs. Now while you’d think this was a competitive total, the Burners had other ideas with the likes of Chris Gayle aka ‘Universe Boss’ and Pakistan’s Ahmed Shehzad coming out to open the batting.
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The duo made light work of a chase that seemed tricky, completing the chase in just 13.1 overs with 41 balls to spare and all of their 10 wickets still intact. While Shehzad played well for his 56(35)*, all eyes were on the West Indian and Jamaican opening batsman, Chris Gayle. He smashed all of the opponent bowlers, hitting as many as seven fours and 10 sixes in this innings.
OUCH!!! i think thats what you call being Gayled!!!!
— Scott Styris (@scottbstyris) February 10, 2012
Gayle was already building a name for himself in T20 cricket back in 2012 and here, he showed the world why he’s the best in the business. Big game in Bangladesh Premier League history and he was strolled past it, ending with 101(44)* and hitting all of the eight bowlers that the Royals bowled on the day, the most against Scott Styris who has smashed for 27 runs off his only over bowled in this game.
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Where there’s a T20 tournament to be played, there’s got to be a century for Chris Gayle, eventually having as many as five centuries in the overall BPL centuries list. No other batsman in the history of the tournament has so many BPL centuries and this day in 2012 was the first of those five he scored in this competition in Bangladesh.
He walked off in style after scoring his maiden BPL century, and Gayle’s contributions in that first BPL season helped Burners go on to the BPL 2012 final, where they eventually couldn’t get over the line and ended runners-up to the Dhaka franchise. For more updates on the top Bangladesh Premier League centuries, make sure you stay tuned to ReadScoops.com…
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