Atherton: changes will be made | Debate: who's to blame for England debacle? | Bell and Panesar should be dropped | David Gower: Gayle leads from the front | 51? Fifty-blooming-one? | England all out for 51 | England sink to their knees | What the papers say

ONE thing leads to another and for Chris Gayle yesterday there was the ultimate satisfaction thCrhisat the excellent work he himself had put in with the bat seemed to inspire his team to heights they had not seen for some years.

For Gayle, this first Test was his opportunity to affirm that the captaincy has helped him to raise his own game but no-one at Sabina Park dared predict that the West Indies bowlers would be as unplayable as they appeared to be yesterday afternoon.

Gayle’s batting recently has been simply excellent. It has been mildly flattering for me recently to find my name in print again thanks to the West Indies captain and his ultra-cool temperament.

Unfortunately, the words “laid” and “back” have come back into fashion at the same time. I can leap to his defence on that one, if he needs defending that is, because whatever his body language and however languid his natural movements are, there is a fire burning within that has made him recently much more productive with the bat than in his more inconsistent early days.

The responsibility of captaincy obviously sits well on his shoulders, while mind and body both seem to be in very good shape. There were, of course, moments of pure Gayle, his second-over six off Flintoff a sublime instance of a shot that comes from nowhere — proof that his innate instincts are working beautifully.

However, to make a hundred on this turgid pitch takes more than a finely-honed instinct. Once Gayle settled, he displayed unrelenting judgment of what to play and what to leave before suddenly reverting to type for an over of more brutal hitting to pump Panesar into the stands a couple of times.

To have to leave the ball alone as often as he did obviously hurt — I saw him in the lift at the hotel yesterday morning and congratulated him on his batting. Gayle gently complained that England had bowled wide at him.

“Did you tell them to do that?” “Not me, Chris.”

My days of deciding tactics are long gone but it is a ploy that might have brought dividends against a younger, more impetuous Chris Gayle and might well still work somewhere along the line as this series develops. Natural strokemakers do not take kindly to being stifled.

At 29 he is of an age that suggests he has some years left to boost his career statistics still further. With this hundred at Sabina Park he took his career average in Tests past the 40 mark, a mark above which you can claim to be a good Test batsman. Now that Gayle knows that he has the ability to focus on his batting in this way he can back himself to produce more consistency. There has to be a knock-on effect for the team, too; a productive and confident captain is the first requirement for a team that needs to pull its socks up.

When West Indies began their stint in the field, it was still a valid question whether they would have the nerve and the resolve to make it count. A lead of 74 was less than they might have envisaged from a position of 220-1 but was handy enough nonetheless and at that stage there was still very much the feeling that, although they clearly held the advantage, one bad session from either side could determine the fate of the match.

Sadly for England, the spectators at Sabina Park did not take long to realise which side was going to suffer a nightmare and for that they can blame Jerome Taylor, whose initial spell was simply brilliant.

For England it was the rudest of shocks and any assumptions of an easy series win for the visitors have been buried. Even so, eventual victory is by no means out of the question because West Indies will be aware that they are still reliant on a few key men. If those key men fail to reproduce the excellence of their work here, things could quickly change back in England’s favour.