A record 750 partnerships for Shivnarine Chanderpaul in Test cricket

Chanderpaul involved in record 750 Test partnerships

Chanderpaul has now involved in a record 750 Test partnerships. Bharath Seervi lists players with most Test partnerships and other aggregates related to partnerships.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul, the backbone of West Indies cricket, has now been involved in 750 partnerships in 159 Tests. He has batted in 271 innings in his career of over 20 years. The 750th partnership was with Marlon Samuels in the second innings of the first Test in South Africa at Centurion. Going into the Test with 747 partnerships to his name, he was involved in two partnerships in the first innings before joining hands with Samuels.

350 or more partnerships in Test cricket and aggregates

Chanderpaul overcame Rahul Dravid’s tally of 738 partnerships in the Test against Bangladesh earlier this year. Sachin Tendulkar (675), Allan Border (617) and Jacques Kallis (613) are the others to be involved in 600 or more Test partnerships.

The contemporary cricketers after Chanderpaul are Kumar Sangakkara (540), Alastair Cook (420), Ian Bell (384), Michael Clarke (371) and Chris Gayle (356).

Chanderpaul also has the highest ratio of partnerships per innings. His ratio is 2.77 while the next best is Rahul Dravid’s 2.58.

Batting with most partners in Test career

Along with the record of having involved in most number of partnerships, Chanderpaul also holds the record of having batted with most teammates in his career. He has shared partnerships with 82 others. He is significantly ahead of Border (74). Tendulkar (65), David Gower (64) and Brian Lara (63) come next.

Talking of the records held by Chanderpaul in Tests related to partnerships, he has put up in excess of a thousand runs with eight different batsmen in his career. He is second only to Kallis, who has achieved this with 10.

1000+ partnership runs with most number of partners

Chanderpaul has put up 969 runs with Darren Bravo; he may soon increase the number of players to nine and may later equal Kallis.

He is also the only player to have watched 500 players of his team being dismissed at the other end while he was entering the crease. Where will he stop?

(Bharath Seervi is a cricket statistician who is obsessed with digging numbers, facts and records related to the game. An active member of Society of Cricket Statisticians of India, he blogs at www.cricketseervistats.blogspot.com. He can be followed on Twitter at www.twitter.com/SeerviBharath and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SeerviCricket)