Seven years on from Chris Gayle's 175, shouldn't it feel more significant?

NICK FRIEND: It isn’t Lara’s 400* nor his 501* – figures that roll off the cricketing tongue, but it also is. There might have been more stylish knocks, more significant efforts. But in T20 history - in 405 IPL games since, nobody has reined it in

Chris Gayle sunk to his knees and stretched out his arms. A roar reverberated around the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, and it was all for him.

It is seven years ago now – to the day, in fact – that the Jamaican enjoyed one of his finest hours, 2,555 days since he set a bar so high that even 405 matches later in the Indian Premier League, nobody has dared touch it nor surpass it.

In a normal year, the IPL would be approaching something like its midway point; balls would be flying, the runs would be stacking up. And yet, the chances are that Gayle’s record would remain intact.

On April 23, 2013, he bludgeoned 175 of the most brutal runs, using up just 66 deliveries in the process. It is still the highest T20 score of all time, still the fastest T20 century of all time; the 17 sixes he hit – more than one every four balls – has been bettered just once, by Gayle himself in the Bangladesh Premier League.

In a game that has developed as far and as fast as T20, its staying power atop these lists only reinforces its unmatched absurdity. Speaking purely in IPL terms, nobody has come close. The next-highest individual score remains Brendon McCullum’s historic 158 in the tournament’s first ever match.

Even there is a 17-run difference – a comfortable victory in the context of the game’s shortest formats. Gayle’s 17 sixes, too, remain in a league of their own: of the five IPL knocks to feature at least 12 sixes, Gayle played three of them, McCullum another and AB de Villiers the last.

If there is a caveat to all of this, it comes in the shape of Bangalore, where three of those innings occurred, clearing a comparatively and notoriously small playing area. It’s little coincidence, perhaps, that since T20 cricket began, Virat Kohli has made the most runs at a single ground – the Chinnaswamy. De Villiers sits third on that list, just under 800 runs behind, also at the same venue.

That, however, is somewhat besides the point here. So astonishing was Gayle’s innings – in a clash between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Pune Warriors – that there was more than a glimmer of an opportunity for a double hundred.

He reached three figures in 30 balls and inside nine overs. One over from Aaron Finch, Pune’s captain, was dispatched for 29 runs, the decision to introduce himself to the attack an exhibition in the art of taking one for the team. The quicker each delivery and the more round-arm he became, the further Gayle hit him. That was the eighth over.

Five balls later, he dropped to the ground in celebration. The side’s total had reached 123; Gayle had all but 21 of them. The six to raise the milestone cannoned into the roof, sending morsels of debris tumbling back down to earth; it merely added to a unique sense of bedlam.

In Freddie Wilde and Tim Wigmore’s excellent Cricket 2.0, they described Gayle’s relationship with the Chinnaswamy as “the cricket ground that had become his playground”.

“He even turned slowing down, the antithesis of all that T20 represented, into a dramatic act.

“It was the definitive performance by T20’s greatest batsman.”

As the occasion celebrates its seventh birthday, it should do so with a certain appreciation. Consider the sheer amount of T20 cricket played now around the world, the number of games played since – some with shorter boundaries, many with worse bowling attacks.

^{Chris Gayle in action for Royal Challengers Bangalore}

And yet, still Gayle stands alone. He recalled the landmark afternoon in his own book, Six Machine: I don’t like cricket…I love it.

“Nobody else wants to bowl,” he wrote of the moment that Finch was forced to turn to himself. “Heads down all round the field, bowlers suddenly fascinated by their toes, or – wow, what’s that in the stands? Or – hmm, look at this callus here on my spinning finger, better get a close look at it.

“And that’s when Finch has to take the ball himself. Yuvraj will tell me afterwards: ‘I told him not to bowl. I told him not to bowl. Don’t do it!’ But no one else wants it, so Finch has no choice.”

It is the effect that Gayle has always had on bowlers and fielding teams. He has never been a 360-degree innovator in the manner of de Villiers, but the sheer purity with which he hits the ball has cast a constant fear into those tasked with dismissing him.

He remains the only man to hit the first ball of a Test match for six – and, for those who associate the left-hander only with the franchise circuit, one of only four men to hit two Test triple centuries, alongside Don Bradman, Brian Lara and Virender Sehwag. That, though, is for a different column.

As well as the disdain reserved for Finch’s left-arm spin that afternoon in Bangalore, Ali Murtaza’s ten balls at Gayle were taken for 43, Mitchell Marsh’s two overs for 37.

He doesn’t seem like the type to do regrets, but this feels close to being one.

“Imagine psychologically getting the 200!” he added in his autobiography.

“I’m out there, I’m in the beautiful groove, the magic is at my side and at my back. 25 more runs? I could have made that in an over.

“I didn’t mind; it’s only when I look back at it and analyse it that I realise the 200 was in the making easily.

“I had no idea of the records I was smashing. I don’t know records. I’ve been involved in a lot of them, but someone will have to dig them out and tell me. I’ve never targeted a record.”

It brings me to a question – one that I don’t necessarily have the answer to. Why isn’t this day more feted? Not the day itself but the innings, the number, the achievement, the fact that nobody since has been able to rein it in. By Cricket Archive's reckoning, 5,271 T20 games have taken place since.

It isn’t Lara’s 400* nor his 501* – figures that roll off the cricketing tongue, but it also is. There might have been more stylish knocks; there have definitely been more significant, match-winning efforts. But in the entire history of the game’s fastest-growing global format, 175 remains the benchmark.

To remind ourselves of happier times we’re offering a £20.19 subscription to celebrate England’s World Cup win once again. Click here to claim