ROSEAU, Do­mini­ca – New­ly-ap­point­ed St Lu­cia Zouks skip­per Dar­ren Sam­my has warned the re­gion to brace for a “dan­ger­ous” Chris Gayle in the Caribbean Pre­mier League sched­uled to get un­der­way in Au­gust.

The 40-year-old Gayle is the most suc­cess­ful Twen­ty20 bats­man in his­to­ry but at age 40, is in the twi­light of his ca­reer, and has al­ready been writ­ten off by many pun­dits as be­ing past his best.

He notched a 22nd T20 hun­dred dur­ing last year’s CPL when he smashed 116 against St Kitts and Nevis Pa­tri­ots but then end­ed the sea­son with on­ly 243 runs at an av­er­age of on­ly 24.

Sam­my, re­cent­ly ap­point­ed to lead Zouks this year, be­lieves that re­cent poor cam­paign will be a huge mo­ti­va­tor for the Ja­maican.

“Chris Gayle is the most suc­cess­ful T20 bats­man we have in the world and to have him play­ing with us in St Lu­cia, I can guar­an­tee you once the tour­na­ment starts it will be a mo­ti­vat­ed Chris Gayle be­cause of what went down in his home­town Ja­maica,” Sam­my told DBS Ra­dio here.

“I’ve seen sit­u­a­tions where peo­ple put Chris Gayle un­der pres­sure where he has to even fo­cus some more [and] that can be dan­ger­ous.

“I’m long­ing to be with him and I know St Lu­cia and the St Lu­cia Zouks will wel­come him with open arms and I know he will be will­ing to show and look­ing to prove that he is still one of the best T20 bats­men go­ing around.”

Gayle’s move to St Lu­cia came as a ma­jor shock es­pe­cial­ly since he had on­ly re­turned to his na­tive fran­chise for the 2019 sea­son, fol­low­ing two years with Pa­tri­ots.

But with Tallawahs win­ning just two of 10 games to fin­ish bot­tom of the stand­ings and miss out on the play­offs, Gayle was part of a shake­up that is al­so ex­pect­ed to see the de­par­ture of head coach Dono­van Miller.

Sam­my said Tallawahs’ loss had been Zouks’ gain and he hoped the two formed a hap­py al­liance.

“I am re­al­ly ex­cit­ed to have him with the fran­chise and like I said, hope­ful­ly, we get to play CPL this year where he could again show the world that he is still the Uni­verse Boss,” said the for­mer West In­dies cap­tain.

For their part, Zouks has strug­gled since the start of the CPL, their best cam­paign com­ing in 2016 when they man­aged to reach the play­offs for the first and on­ly time.

They were sim­ply dis­as­trous in 2017, los­ing nine of their 10 out­ings to fin­ish the sea­son win­less, and were lit­tle bet­ter over the two sea­sons fol­low­ing, fin­ish­ing one from the bot­tom on each oc­ca­sion in the six-team league.

De­spite the lack of suc­cess, Sam­my said he re­mained op­ti­mistic of a turn­around this year.

“It’s al­ways an ho­n­our and a plea­sure to lead any crick­et team, es­pe­cial­ly one from your home­town,” said Sam­my, who over­saw West In­dies’ T20 World Cup tri­umphs in 2012 and 2016.

“With that said, the St Lu­cia fran­chise has not had the best of CPLs but I’m al­ways an op­ti­mistic guy. I’m some­body who nev­er gives up and I feel that in the lat­ter days of my ca­reer, my pride and my joy would be to bring some sil­ver­ware to the St Lu­cian peo­ple via the CPL.

“So this year, hope­ful­ly by Au­gust, the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion is not as dan­ger­ous and would not pre­vent us from play­ing crick­et, and I’m look­ing for­ward to lead­ing the squad [then].”

The CPL is sched­uled to run from Au­gust 19 to Sep­tem­ber 26.

(CMC)