Gibbs was schooled
at St Joseph's Marist College and then Diocesan
College in Rondebosch. Gibbs was a gifted sportsman at school playing
provincial rugby, cricket and soccer and featuring in SA Schools teams for all
three sports.
At backward point,
he is considered by some to be the next Jonty Rhodes
in his ability to hit the stumps; he had affected the eighth highest number of
run-outs in ODI cricket of any fieldsman, with the tenth highest success rate.
Gibbs is said to rarely practice in the nets
before a match. It is said he prefers to play on instinct in this case.
He became the first
player to hit six sixes in one over in One Day International cricket, doing so
against the Netherlands in the 2007 Cricket World Cup. On 8 June 2007 he
got married in St Kitts
to Tenielle Povey, but divorced soon afterwards.
Gibbs
has played some of the most outrageous strokes yet seen. How many other batsmen
practice, seriously, cuts fast bowlers for six? Or drive throat balls down the
ground? Or make pulling off the front foot look everyday? That goes for whether
he is batting in the middle of the order or at the top, and whether the ball is
old or new. Gibbs has put all that together so many times that he can't be
accused of being some charlatan who deals in fluke and luck.
He
did so in the grandest of manner at the Wanderers in 2006 to score 175 off 111
balls and help South Africa clinch a one-day series against Australia. The
battleground scenes of this extraordinary match, that delivered totals of 434
for four and 438 for nine, swirled all about. But Gibbs batted with the glee of
a teenager armed with his father's credit card in a strip club. Pressure?
That's what other people feel.
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