All done with insouciance. As one of his 1000-odd T20 sixes would light up the night sky, sometimes not a flicker would pass over Gayle's face. He might amble towards his partner, walking as slowly as the white ball travelled quickly, as cool as only a Jamaican can be.
A few stats tell how far ahead he was of all his contemporaries. Gayle has hit 14306 runs in 20-over cricket. Nobody comes within 3000 runs of him.
The highest T20 innings is Gayle's unbeaten 175 for Royal Challengers Bangalore in the 2016 IPL off 66 balls - and he slowed down! He had reached his hundred off 30 balls. Eight years on that is still the highest innings and the fastest century, so far was he ahead of his time.
In their book "Cricket 2.0" the authors Tim Wigmore and Freddie Wilde quote a banner unfurled in Bangalore that evening, and it could serve as the epitaph for Gayle's transformative impact on cricket: "When Gayle bats, fielders become spectators and spectators become fielders."
It is worth pausing, for a moment, like a bowler at the start of his run. In that innings Gayle brought up his century when RCB's innings had been going for 8.5 overs against Pune Warriors. Mind-boggling.
Gayle was brought back for this World Cup in the hope that he could do it once more, but he started at number three rather than open, and never got going. Nor did the West Indies as a team. They looked as though they had rested on their laurels as defending champions and not evolved as England, for example, have done.
Gayle in his prime could just stand there and hit sixes. Lesser mortals have to find additional ways to score. But even though the hurricane has blown itself out, Gayle will forever be remembered, not just as a white-ball hitter, but as a batsman who scored two Test triple-centuries. In sum, the Master Blaster.
