After Kings XI Punjab rode on Chris Gayle’s 63-ball unbeaten knock of 104 that gave them a win by 15 runs, Andre Tye was all praise for the West Indian and said that his teammate’s shot selection and execution was spot on and that he played to perfection.

Andre Tye, in a post-match conference, said, “Gayle played to perfection. He made sure that he stayed there till the end. You don’t often see (Rashid) Khan get hit for more than 25 in one over. To make Rashid concede that many runs (55 in four overs) was awesome.”

“I think he went about it very well. He knew that once he got through the powerplay, the spin would come on and then he got into the rhythm against the spin. I think he was very smart about it not to take too many risks against the pacers (early on),” he said.

When asked what Tye would have done if he was the one bowling to Gayle, he replied, “I guess you could try and get him off strike, but at the same time as pace bowlers you want to get him out because you know you have spin to come and he is lining up to attack them. It is different for every pitch you play on, tonight might have been the case of going short at him or could have been the case of just try him play some big shots and make him miss one.”

Even SRH bowler Siddharth Kaul praised Gayle’s smart execution. “The mindset is to get your execution right and bowl in the right areas. We were planning it that way only, but tough luck that his execution was better than ours and every shot he played was getting connected,” said Kaul.

“Gayle was executing smartly and he was challenging our main bowlers and he played really well,” Kaul said. “In the end, we did our best and came close to the target losing by only 15 runs.”

Regardless, Kaul insisted that they will stay position for the upcoming matches. “We will stay positive and try to do better in upcoming games,” he said.