Shivnarine Chanderpaul – The unsung Caribbean icon

A crab-like stance and/or a batsman who uses bails to take his guard - these things come to mind when we think of Shivnarine Chanderpaul. The Caribbean stalwart did not follow the copybook style of batting.

With chest facing the bowler, Chanderpaul had an awkward stance. However, he made runs and batted for hours and hours with his unique style. He was special and a lone warrior in West Indies’ fragile middle order.

The West Indies legend has scored 11867 Test runs at an average of 51.37 with 30 hundreds. He also made 8778 ODI runs at an average of 41.60. These are legendary and enviable stats by any means. But his impact cannot be measured by runs and averages because teams often struggled hard to dismiss him.

Chanderpaul spent 1000 minutes at the crease between consecutive Test dismissals on as many as four occasions. In 2002, he batted on and on for 25 hours spread across three innings against India. In 2007, the left-hander spent 17 hours in three innings against England. In 2008, he clocked in 18 hours in three innings against Australia.

Chanderpaul has 49 not outs to his name. He number three on the all-time list of facing the most balls. His balls per innings ratio of 181.65 is only behind Geoffrey Boycott (190.59) and Rahul Dravid (189).

He knew the other way too

Normally Chanderpaul played a defensive mode of cricket and people around the globe formed an assumption that he could only bat one way. In 2003 against Australia at Bourda, the southpaw walked in when the score was 47-4. It was the time to re-guard, play cautiously and defensively because a couple of more wickets at that stage could have made things tough.

Chanderpaul was known for his defensive batting but he chose to explode. He made a 69-ball hundred against an bowling attack comprising the likes of Jason Gillespie, Brett Lee, Andy Bichel and Stuart MacGill. His knock remains the sixth fastest century in Test cricket.

The Guyana-based veteran also took Shane Warne to the cleaners at Sydney in 1996. He hammered the leg-spinner all over the park when his teammates had no clue against the legendary Australian. In 2009, he cut loose against England’s Steve Harmison and scored 26 runs in one over including five fours as well as a six in an ODI at Providence.

An unsung hero

Despite sustaining a broken finger, Chanderpaul scored 104 in West Indies’ world record chase of 418 in the longest format of the game against Australia. The southpaw had an excellent year in 2008 when he was named the Wisden Cricketer of the year as well as ICC Player of the year. His stats in Tests in that year read - 909 runs from 16 innings at an average of 101.

He held the number one ranking in Tests more than once. Between 2007 and 2014, the unorthodox batsman scored 4980 runs and possessed an astounding average of 69.16.

Even though Chanderpaul didn’t enjoy captaincy, his debut as Test skipper was memorable. The left-handed batsman scored an unbeaten 200 at his home venue in Guyana. He was only the second batsman to score a double ton on captaincy debut. He resigned from captaincy in order to focus more on batting.

When Chanderpaul announced his retirement, he was only 86 runs behind the iconic Brian Lara in the list of all-time run-scorers for West Indies in Tests. The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) refused to provide him a farewell match or an opportunity to play a couple of Tests to go past Lara’s record.

As most of his incredible innings came in losing causes, he has become an unsung hero. Chanderpaul showed the world that it is possible to become successful without following the textbook. In an era of increasing T20 cricket, there may be plenty of power hitters in West Indies but there cannot be a determined batsmen like Chanderpaul.