Gilchrist's Test career might have been longer had he not been sent home halfway through West Indies' 1958–59 tour of the Indian subcontinent after disagreements with captain Gerry Alexander.
In the Fourth Test at Nagpur, after Indian batsman A. G. Kripal Singh had struck three consecutive boundaries and taunted him, Gilchrist deliberately overstepped the bowling mark by six metres and delivered a bouncer which hit the Sikh batsman on the head, dislodging his turban.
In the following match, against North Zone, Gilchrist unleashed a barrage of beamers against Swaranjit Singh, whom Alexander had known at Cambridge.
During the lunch interval Alexander substituted him, and he was subsequently sent home, while the other players proceeded to Pakistan for the remainder of the tour.
After the end of Gilchrist's Test career he spent many years playing in the English Lancashire League.