Chris Gayle of RCB celebrating after his century runs during the RCB V/S Pune Warriors IPL T-20 match at Chinnaswamy Stadium, in Bangalore on Tuesday 23rd of April 2013
After a spell of summer showers, it rained sixes and fours at the M. Chinnaswamy stadium here Tuesday evening under a cloudy sky as Royal Challengers Bangalore’s explosive opener Chris Gayle scored the Indian Premier League’s fastest century in 30 balls and highest score of 175 in 66 balls against Pune Warriors India.
Put in to bat first, the West Indian southpaw lost no time in setting the stands on fire with his blitzkrieg knock that included a record 17 sixes and 13 fours and remained unbeaten after being at the crease for all the 20 stipulated overs.
Returning to bat after a 30-minute break when a sudden downpour disrupted the game, Gayle raced to 50 in 17 balls with four mighty sixes and four 4s and to 100 in 30 balls with 11 sixes and eight boundaries.
Feared as the most dangerous batsman in the tournament, the Jamaican beat Indian all-rounder Yusuf Pathan’s record of scoring a century in 37 balls while playing for Rajasthan Royals against Mumbai Indians in Mumbai March 14, 2010 and equalled the half-century record of Aussie wicket-keeper Adam Gilchrist, scored against Delhi Daredevils in 2009 while captaining Deccan Chargers.
Not content with setting new IPL records galore or upsetting previous ones, including the fastest 150 in 53 balls, beating the 158-run in 73 balls record of Brendon McCullum of KKR against the home team in the tournament’s inaugural match in Bangalore April 2, 2008, Gayle was involved in a record opening partnership of 167 runs in 13.4 overs with opening partner Tillakaratne Dilshan of Sri Lanka, who hit a modest 33 in 36 balls, including five hits to the fence.
At a phenomenal strike rate of 266.15 percent, another IPL record, Gayle stood rock-like at one end even as the hosts lost five wickets for a record 263 runs, beating the previous 246-run record of Chennai Super Kings (CSK) against RR in 2010.
None of Pune’s seven bowlers could stop the lanky hitter from going hammer and tongs after them. Warriors captain Aaron Finch, who won the toss and elected to bowl on a flat batting wicket, had given up changing bowlers after every over as Gayle was unstoppable and the fielders could do little as most of the runs from his deadly bat were coming from sixes and fours.
“What a joy watching Gayle play! It was indeed a storm after rain gods opened up on a mid-summer evening. I lost count of sixes and fours he was hitting in every over he faced. He has set a benchmark for other openers and batsmen on how to play in the shorter-version of the game,” beaming Ranjan Chakravarty, a director in a financial firm, told IANS in the pavilion.
Surprisingly, Finch did not ask reputed all-rounder Yuvraj Singh to bowl even a single over while Gayle took all the bowlers to the cleaners and stunned a clueless Warriors and reducing the tie to a one-sided contest.
“As this is the last league tie RCB is playing this month before going for (six) away games over the next fortnight, I took a half-day leave to come and watch Gayle play after I heard the home team will bat first. What an innings it was. Incredible! Never in my life have I seen such an awesome batting display, with a whopping 17 sixes. God knows, what he eats and where does he get that energy,” hotelier Rashid Khan quipped.
Gaming is big business and if the rumors are to be believed a new player is about to emerge. Google is said to be working on a new game streaming service, which includes new hardware. The new service is codenamed Yeti and would use Google’s processing power to render games and stream them to your device. This would allow people to enjoy high-quality graphics on lower end devices since all of the graphics would be rendered by Google. A person familiar with the Yeti project describes it as like playing The Witcher 3 but within a Chrome browser tab.
A service like this could open up a whole new world of gaming and possibilities. Imagine if you could play a game across your devices. For example, you start a game on your TV and later when you’re waiting in the doctor’s office you continue on your phone or pick up where you left off in Chrome while at work. With a service like this, it will help make gaming even more accessible. With the hardware entry barrier lowered, it brings gaming to an even wider audience.
Sources say that Google is also working on a hardware component and has been in talks with some gaming studios, too. We’ve already seen what Google is capable of when it comes to streaming and hardware when you look at YouTube and Chromecast. If they can bring that level of quality and ease of use to gaming, it is certainly something to get excited about.
However, at this time all we have to go on is rumors. Google has a history of working on projects that never see the light of day. There are also many challenges when tackling a project like this such as streaming quality, availability of games, lag, bandwidth caps, processing power, and more. If any company was going to make it successful it would have to be the company who brought us YouTube and Chromecast.