Vin­ode Mam­chan

West In­dies open­er Chris Gayle will re­sume his place at the top of the bat­ting or­der in Fri­day's third match against South Africa.

The cel­e­brat­ed West In­dies bats­man who blast­ed a 47-ball cen­tu­ry in his team's first match against Eng­land last Wednes­day, was forced to watch from the pavil­lion as his team de­feat­ed Sri Lan­ka by sev­en wick­ets in its sec­ond match on Sun­day.

The 40,000 strong crowd which showed up at the Chin­naswamy Sta­di­um in Ban­ga­lore to see Gayle was dis­ap­point­ed af­ter the open­er felt a twinge in his left ham­string and had to leave the field when Sri Lan­ka bat­ted.

Gayle's fail­ure to open the in­nings when the West In­dies bat­ted was met with boos and jeers by the fans but his re­place­ment An­dre Fletch­er blast­ed an un­beat­en 84 to guide the West In­dies to vic­to­ry.

With lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion cir­cu­lat­ing about Gayle's in­jury, West In­dies me­dia man­ag­er Philip Spoon­er rushed in­to the me­dia cen­tre to re­lay the news about the ham­string in­jury.Spoon­er said that there was no dan­ger of Gayle miss­ing the rest of the tour­na­ment.

He ex­plained that Gayle could not have opened the bat­ting since giv­en the rules con­cern­ing play­ers leav­ing the field, he could not have got­ten in be­fore 10.11 pm or un­til five wick­ets had fall­en.

Yes­ter­day, a com­fort­able look­ing Gayle took his place on the team's coach and head­ed to the air­port for an 11 am flight to Nag­pur, where the West In­dies will play South Africa in their third match on Fri­day.

While in Nag­pur at the Le Mere­di­en Ho­tel, Gayle and oth­er play­ers will take to the train­er's ta­ble for mas­sages, in or­der to get to full fit­ness for the all im­por­tant clash.The West In­dies are at the top of the stand­ings and with a foot in­to the semis.They have four points af­ter wins against Eng­land and Sri Lan­ka.

South Africa lost to Eng­land but de­feat­ed Afghanistan and has two points. If the West In­dies can de­feat both South Africa and Afghanistan and fin­ish at the top of Group 1, they will play the sec­ond placed team in Group 2 at the Fer­oz Shah Kot­la in Del­hi in one of the se­mi-fi­nals.

If they fin­ish sec­ond, they play the win­ners of Group 2 at the Wankhede Sta­di­um in Mum­bai.