Chanderpaul – grows roots at the crease while playing against India!

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By Nishad Pai Vaidya

Shivnarine Chanderpaul, the left-hander from Guyana, has been West Indies’ pillar of strength for a number of years now. West Indies cricket may have struggled in the course of the last few years, but Chanderpaul has held firm and has symbolised their hopes of a brighter tomorrow.

Whenever the West Indies have found themselves in a muddle in recent years, more often than not it has been Chanderpaul who has fought hard and led lone vigils to raise his team’s hopes. As the men from the Caribbean get ready to battle with the Indian team, they would hope for a great performance from him as he has a liking for the hosts’ bowling.

Chanderpaul isn’t been the most expressive cricketer or the most flamboyant and has never attracted the media spotlight like his contemporaries such as Brian Lara and Chris Gayle. Behind his cool exterior, there lies a fighter who has the fire to perform for his team. Throughout his career he has let his bat do the talking and has scripted some of the finest knocks in tough situations. It is unfortunate that his best years have coincided with his team’s decline otherwise quite a few of his great epics would have scripted wins for the West Indies.

A look at his record depicts the story very clearly. He has amassed 23 hundreds his Test career, but 16 of them have come in draws or losses. Some of those hundreds were great exhibitions of class, and yet he didn’t find himself on the right side of the result.

Here are some of his stats*:

*Only includes instances where he has scored hundreds

The hundreds he has scored in the victorious causes have come when West Indies needed inspiration and most of those knocks have provided them the solidity and the base to build the ultimate result. However, some of his best knocks are unfortunately a part of the last two rows of the above table. On most of those occasions, wickets have tumbled and Chanderpaul has had to lead an individual battle. Whenever he has succeeded and found some support, West Indies have managed to draw otherwise they have landed on the losing side. He has lacked the support at the other end on a number of occasions and the West Indies been able to finish the good work done by him.

Two of his six hundreds in losing causes will go down as some of his best. When Australia toured West Indies in 2003, they ran into a blazing Chanderpaul in the first Test at Guyana. As West Indies kept losing wickets in the first innings, the left-hander bludgeoned one of the fastest hundreds in Test cricket. The other West Indian batsmen seemed to be struggling against the strong Australian bowling but he made batting look easy, as he picked boundaries at will. The home side lost that match, but fate gave Chanderpaul another chance as he guided West Indies in their historic run-chase of 418 in the last Test of the same series.

The other hundred that would rank among his finest is his knock of 116 not out against England in 2007 which threatened a score of 455 in the fourth innings. Chanderpaul was having a phenomenal summer in England and looked like an impenetrable fort. West Indies had to chase 455 at Manchester and he was the only one who spent considerable time in the middle. The other batsmen got off to some great starts but didn’t last long enough to provide support. In the end, they lost by 60 runs. But the story would have been a lot different had someone given him a valuable hand in the tough task.

For Team India, Chanderpaul is the man who is most difficult to dislodge. At one point of time, the Indian fans only watched him bat whenever they switched on their television sets to catch the action between India and the West indies. Team India have borne the brunt of his grit as he has made life difficult for them and hasn’t allowed them to dominate the way they would have liked. His record against India is phenomenal as he has consistently amassed runs against them. The bowling attack may have changed over the years but that hasn’t made too much of a difference.

His record against India is as follows:

Off late, he hasn’t had the astoundingly prolific runs against India, but he has played quite a few knocks to frustrate them and hold them off. The hundred he scored at Dominica earlier this year was his first Test hundred against them in nine years, a very surprising fact when you keep his record in 2002 (against India) in perspective. Four of those six hundreds came in that year as he made life difficult for India in the Caribbean and also played some fighting knocks when they visited the sub continent later that year.

The West Indies are touring India for the first time since 2002 and it is very surprising considering the fact that India have made the trip to the Caribbean twice (for Tests only) in the elapsed interval. Their previous trip (the one before the 2002 tour) was in 1994 and this just indicates the fact that the Caribbean side isn’t touring India as often as some of the other teams. This may be the last time Indian fans are likely to catch a glimpse of 37-year-old Chanderpaul. He would like to cap off his tryst with India in style and will have the support of some of the promising young faces who have shown signs of taking some of the burden off his shoulders!

(Nishad Pai Vaidya, a 21-year-old law student, is a club and college-level cricketer. His teachers always complain, “He knows the stats and facts of cricket more than the subjects we teach him.”)