Chanderpaul celebrates century of Tests
by Fazeer Mohammed
Even on his big day, someone who wasn't even playing grabbed much of the attention.
It just seems so typical of the understated career of Shivnarine Chanderpaul that as he walked onto the field in Multan yesterday for his 100th Test match for the West Indies, many eyes were focused on the dressing room, where vice-captain Ramnaresh Sarwan sat after being dropped for the second Test against Pakistan.
Yet that might have been just the way the former captain would have liked it, because there are few cricketers of such longevity who shun the spotlight as much as the left-handed Guyanese.
From the time he first fell in love with the game playing it in the fields of Unity Village, all Chanderpaul has ever wanted to do was bat. It doesn't matter if the bowler is a pre-teen schoolboy or Shane Warne, if the field is shared by cows and goats or surrounded by towering stands packed to the rafters. The attitude is essentially the same: to bat and bat and bat--and then bat some more.
As just the eighth West Indian to reach the plateau of 100 Tests, he has broken the mould, not merely as the first of East Indian descent to reach that landmark, but for the fact that his demeanour and stature in the global context of the game is so very different from the others who have completed three figures wearing the burgundy cap.
The previous seven-Courtney Walsh, Brian Lara, Viv Richards, Desmond Haynes, Clive Lloyd, Gordon Greenidge and Carl Hooper-are all players fashioned from a template that is so typically West Indian: exciting, brilliant, spectacular, domineering and devastating. Then there is Chanderpaul. He has filled out quite a bit in the nearly 13 years since he made his Test debut as a scrawny 19-year-old, but he is still physically frail, as evidenced by the frequency with which he has been struck down by any number of ailments, ranging from injury to cramps to food poisoning.
Unlike the others in the 100-Test club from the Caribbean, his is not a physically commanding presence, nor does he breathe fire and brimstone in the general direction of his immediate opponent in the heat of battle. No sir, for him it is about getting out there and getting the job done with a minimum of gallerying, something he has been quite effective at as his impressive tally of 6,617 runs (ave 44.70) with 14 hundreds and 39 fifties confirms.
It is known that he hates the description of his batting style as "crab-like", but what else can you say about someone who shuffles across the crease the way he does? Only recently has he reversed a process of becoming exaggeratingly square-on in his batting stance, and heading into this 100th Test, he hadn't raised his bat in acknowledgement of a hundred for 14 matches.
Yet there is little chance of the 32-year-old Chanderpaul being dropped on form in the near future as there are very few of his kind in contemporary West Indies cricket, the kind who are prepared to do whatever is necessary for the cause of the team.
He is not a natural leader, but did not shirk the responsibility of captaincy last year in the midst of the destabilising sponsorship row, even if it contributed to a dramatic decline in his batting form. At the start of the current Asian campaign, he admitted to not being too comfortable opening the batting in one-dayers. However his partnership with Chris Gayle at the top of the order in ODIs has proven so productive that there is really no chance of it being broken up heading into the 2007 World Cup.
As quiet and reserved as he appears, Chanderpaul is no shrinking Ti-Marie when a contest is at its most intense. It was on his first tour of Australia in 1996/97, at the age of 22, that he took on the challenge of the number three spot in the batting order as Lara laboured against the threat of Glenn McGrath. The Aussies love to get under the skin of their opponents, but most know they are wasting their time when it comes to Chanderpaul, simply because he is hardly ever put-off by their insults.
Their respect for the Guyanese batsman is understandable. On that debut tour Down Under, he tore into Warne and company on a turning pitch in Sydney in getting to 71 on the last morning before being conquered by an outrageous delivery from the leg-spinner. On his home ground at Bourda three years ago, he plundered the third fastest Test hundred-69 balls-of all time and then closed off the series with another century that helped the West Indies to reach a world record victory target of 418 in Antigua and avoid the humiliation of a series whitewash in their own backyards.
Their careers have followed very different paths, but he will forever be associated with Brian Lara for his role in partnering the more flamboyant left-hander to his first world Test record of 375 at the ARG in 1994.
No doubt the captaincy issue and sponsorship rift must have created some tension between them, but at the end of the day, Lara would be among the first to acknowledge that hardly anyone has shown the level of commitment to the cause of West Indies cricket at this very difficult time than the "Tiger" from Unity
