Chris Gayle was strolling around in Tino Best's shirt ahead of West In­dies' open­ing NatWest Se­ries in­ter­na­tion­al against Eng­land. Best might have the sur­name but Gayle has the rep­u­ta­tion. "BEST" com­mu­ni­cat­ed em­phat­i­cal­ly enough that, af­ter a 15-month ab­sence, West In­dies' most dom­i­neer­ing bats­man is back in the fold. With Gayle one of a host of de­struc­tive bats­men back for West In­dies for the one-day leg of the tour and Kevin Pietersen hav­ing en­tered pre­ma­ture re­tire­ment from Eng­land lim­it­ed-overs du­ty, it is pos­si­ble to present West In­dies, af­ter their re­cent drawn se­ries against Aus­tralia, as strong favourites, on­ly for the usu­al tale of un­set­tled weath­er to bring Eng­land hopes of swing and seam and a po­ten­tial get-out clause. Eng­land would be well ad­vised to pro­tect their san­i­ty by not study­ing too many sta­tis­tics on six-hit­ting. There might be more to win­ning a crick­et match than hit­ting a long ball, but the com­par­isons are strik­ing. Draw up a like­ly West In­dies top sev­en and they have hit 418 six­es in ODIs. Com­pare Eng­land's top sev­en and they bare­ly muster 100. Gayle has hit more than the whole of the Eng­land side put to­geth­er.

It is hard to imag­ine Eng­land de­bat­ing in the bar who hits the biggest six­es; it would prob­a­bly be frowned on as a sign of im­ma­tu­ri­ty. Ac­cord­ing to Ot­tis Gib­son, the West In­dies coach, they do it all the time. "We have al­ways talked about who hits the biggest six­es," Gib­son said be­fore list­ing eight con­tenders for the prize. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, when pressed he named Gayle as the most dan­ger­ous hit­ter of all. "Gayle is the best one-day bats­man in the world and most de­struc­tive so my mon­ey will al­ways be on him when it comes to hit­ting the biggest six­es." Gayle's re­turn has cer­tain­ly been well timed for Hamp­shire. Their re­nam­ing of the Rose Bowl in a six-year deal with Ageas has been cru­cial boost at a time of great fi­nan­cial hard­ship; tick­et sales al­so quick­ened the mo­ment Gayle made his peace with West In­dies, en­sur­ing a near-ca­pac­i­ty 14,000 crowd.

This is a very dif­fer­ent West In­dies side than the one that de­spite its im­pres­sive spir­it was large­ly out­played in the Test se­ries. Gib­son ex­pects "about eight changes" adding: "At the start of the tour I said the one-day se­ries pro­vides us with our best chance of suc­cess and we still be­lieve that. We be­lieve we have got a great chance of win­ning games in this se­ries. "Gayle is a world class play­er and will strength­en us. He has al­ways been a bit of a jok­er and prankster around the dress­ing room. He is his nor­mal self and the team has al­ways in­te­grat­ed guys very well. That has not changed. He has fit­ted in well and is rar­ing to go."