We've been waiting for a while this season for Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli and AB De Villiers to thump the bowlers with disdain together, and unfortunately for the Kings XI Punjab, they were the ones to face the brunt, on the night when three of the best batsmen in the world decided to go into tonk-town in IPL 2015.
The result of that stupendous assault, when Gayle (117, 57b, 7x4, 12x6) scored a ridiculous century, Kohli a nice 32 (3x4, 1x6) and AB De Villiers a ridiculous unbeaten 47 (24b, 3x4, 4x6), was the Royal Challengers Bangalore posting an absolutely massive 226/3 in their 20 overs.
Chasing such a high score, the Kings XI Punjab batsmen, who cannot seem to buy run at the moment in IPL 2015, succumbed to the pressure easier than ice melting in 40 degree heat, to get bowled out for a pathetic 88 in 13.4 overs and hand RCB their biggest IPL victory.
The moment Gayle slammed 20 runs off Mitchell Johnson in the second over of the match, you knew this was going to be a special night. And those special-night-feelings only increased when Gayle was dropped by George Bailey in the next over, with the West Indian making the Kings XI Punjab pay for that miss, and how.
When Gayle is on-song, even De Villiers is made to look like a mere mortal, and that was the case on Wednesday night at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. It was Gayleforce time, and no bowler – seriously, no bowler – was going to stop this amazingly powerful man from Jamaica (well, not KXIP, at least, because Manan Vohra would drop an absolute sitter when Gayle was on 53 in the ninth over as well).
When you give such a destructive batsman, in such a destructive mood, two lives, you're asking for trouble, and so it proved to be as Gayle thumped the bowlers for fun for 17 overs, before eventually bowing out to reduce the KXIP bowlers' suffering.
De Villiers, though, would ensure that suffering would go on until the end, even hitting Karanveer Singh for three sixes, to pile on the misery.
If KXIP were even going to make a game of it, they were going to need Glenn Maxwell to play a Gayle-like innings, but Mitchell Starc (4-0-15-4) and Sreenath Aravind (4-0-27-4), playing his first game this season, had other ideas, picking up four wickets apiece to turn this match into an absolute rout, and then some.
