CAN­BER­RA–For­mer West In­dies fast bowler Michael Hold­ing be­lieves Chris Gayle's whirl­wind dou­ble-cen­tu­ry against Zim­bab­we was his most dom­i­nant in­nings and would have come as a re­lief to the bats­man, while Eng­land's Jonathan Trott felt the knock sim­ply reaf­firmed how cru­cial Gayle was to West In­dies' plans of go­ing far in the World Cup.

Hold­ing and Trott were speak­ing on ES­P­N­cricin­fo's match analy­sis show.

Gayle had gone 19 months and 19 in­nings with­out scor­ing an ODI hun­dred since Ju­ly 2013, rais­ing ques­tions from cer­tain sec­tions about his place in the team, but Hold­ing said Gayle al­ways had it in him to si­lence his crit­ics with a big score.

"I had a feel­ing Gayle might come around to the par­ty this time," Hold­ing said. "He has shown every­one he is still ca­pa­ble of get­ting runs, and at a fan­tas­tic rate. He start­ed slow­ly, but he has been in bad form, so you could ex­pect that.

"You could see that it was a big re­lief. The catch that he took and then he just rolled about for 50 yards and he was just hav­ing a ball. You can see Chris Gayle walk­ing on the field and peo­ple say that he looks a lit­tle dis­in­ter­est­ed, mop­ing. He gets a good knock and every­thing changes."

Gayle took 105 balls to reach his hun­dred, but as the in­nings wore, he grew more au­thor­i­ta­tive, reg­u­lar­ly pulling every Zim­bab­we bowler over the leg-side bound­ary. At the end of his 147-ball 215, Gayle had bro­ken a host of records–the high­est World Cup score, the fastest dou­ble-hun­dred, and tied for the most six­es in an ODI. Gayle re­ceived am­ple sup­port from Mar­lon Samuels, with whom he added an ODI record part­ner­ship of 372 runs.

Such was the fe­roc­i­ty with which Gayle played, ac­cord­ing to Hold­ing, that it al­lowed Samuels to go about his own game and com­pile a handy 133.

"Gayle's in­nings was spe­cial be­cause it was so dom­i­nant. Samuels did not look like he was in a rush or that he had to score too quick­ly. That was be­cause Gayle dom­i­nat­ed the en­tire pro­ceed­ings.

"If you're bat­ting along­side Gayle with the form he was in to­day, it doesn't mat­ter how good a play­er you are. You'll au­to­mat­i­cal­ly re­lax a bit since you don't have to take any risk. So all Samuels had to do was push around and put the bad balls away."

Trott said he was re­mind­ed of an­oth­er pow­er­ful in­nings watch­ing Gayle bat: Mar­tin Gup­till's un­beat­en 189 which sunk Eng­land in 2013. On that day, Trott had replied with a cen­tu­ry of his own, but Eng­land couldn't get close to the 360-run tar­get.

"You could see the re­lief on Gayle's face, and just how ap­pre­cia­tive he was of his team-mates."

How­ev­er, Trott was al­so quick to point out how Gayle had en­joyed a big slice of luck in his in­nings. Tinashe Pa­nyan­gara had an ap­peal for lbw turned down af­ter curl­ing one in­to Gayle when the bats­man was yet to get off the mark. Pa­nyan­gara re­viewed, and even though the re­plays sug­gest­ed the ball would go on to knock the bails off, um­pire Steve Davis' orig­i­nal call was up­held. Then, when he was on 121, Gayle skied one down long-on's throat, but Pa­nyan­gara had over­stepped his mark while de­liv­er­ing the ball.

"The key thing was he could've been giv­en out. If that had been giv­en, none of us would have bat­ted an eye­lid," Trott said. "It's amaz­ing how quick­ly things can turn­around in sport."