MEL­BOURNE–West In­dies bat­ting star Chris Gayle will not be re­turn­ing to Mel­bourne Rene­gades for this year's Big Bash League.

The fran­chise con­firmed they had de­cid­ed to fo­cus their at­ten­tion else­where for the com­ing sea­son, rul­ing out any pos­si­bil­i­ty of Gayle be­ing part of the line-up.

"We'll un­veil our in­ter­na­tion­al sign­ings soon and Chris isn't part of those plans," Rene­gades chief ex­ec­u­tive Stu­art Coven­try said.

The move by the Rene­gades comes quick­ly on the heels of the lat­est sex­ism con­tro­ver­sy in­volv­ing Gayle, last week.

In an in­ter­view with jour­nal­ist Char­lotte Ed­wards pub­lished in the Times pa­per in Eng­land, Gayle is quot­ed as say­ing he has "a very, very big bat, the biggest in the wooooorld."

He added: "You think you could lift it? You'd need two hands."

Ed­wards al­so said Gayle asked her how many Black men she has "had" and al­so in­quired if she had ever been in­volved in a "t'ee­some".

The in­ter­view once again sparked con­tro­ver­sy, es­pe­cial­ly against the back­drop of his "don't blush ba­by" scan­dal dur­ing the Big Bash last Jan­u­ary, for which he was rep­ri­mand­ed and fined for his con­tentious com­ments.

Som­er­set, with whom Gayle will take up a six-match con­tract in the T20 Blast short­ly, said this week they were "dis­ap­point­ed" to read Gayle's com­ments and would talk to the play­er once he ar­rived at the club.

"We were dis­ap­point­ed to read the re­port in the Times," Som­er­set chief ex­ec­u­tive Guy Laven­der, was quot­ed as say­ing. "Our ex­pe­ri­ence of Chris was very pos­i­tive when he was with us last sea­son, both on and off the pitch.

It was dis­ap­point­ing to read the ar­ti­cle. We haven't had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss this with him yet, but of course will do so when he ar­rives to play for us in a few days' time."

Laven­der said that de­spite the lat­est brouha­ha, he ex­pect­ed Gayle to still suit up for the club. "Play­ers are the am­bas­sadors of the club. We have a good record of sign­ing mav­er­icks, Ian Both­am and Viv Richards be­ing ex­am­ples, but we take con­duct se­ri­ous­ly," he stressed. "It's a shame be­cause it de­tracts from his crick­et­ing abil­i­ty. But I don't see it as grounds to have him not play for us this sum­mer." CMC

The 36-year-old Ja­maican is one of the most sought-af­ter Twen­ty20 stars and is cur­rent­ly play­ing for Roy­al Chal­lengers Ban­ga­lore in the Caribbean Pre­mier League.