Quiet man Chanderpaul comes out of his shell

Profiles / Andrew Hughes / 23 June 2008 / Leave a Comment

The courageous West Indies batsmen has been consistently irresistible and is a certainty for Andrew Hughes' World XI.

Limpet. Barnacle. Crab-like. Though he was born and raised in a Guyanese fishing village, I expect Shivnarine Chanderpaul is heartily sick of shellfish. Whilst other, less talented batsmen are compared with cavaliers, artists or craftsmen, he amasses crustaceous clichés by the trawler-full.

But every smelly old cliché was once a fresh observation. Watch Chanderpaul bat for any length of time and you can see why journalists start to come over all nautical. It's something to do with the crouched, front-on stance, the way he plays everything off the back foot, deflecting, edging, shuffling from side to side as necessary. Then there's his adhesive quality. Once set, you can't shift him. His concentration appears unceasing; his ability to bat and bat and then bat some more defies the modern goldfish-like attention span.

And so often it has been Chanderpaul's watchful defiance that has stood between the West Indies and humiliation. He hasn't been able to avert disaster on every occasion, but he is only human. More often than not, he is there when his country needs him. We saw it first hand last year when he fought a lone battle, defying without difficulty an England attack that his teammates found irresistible.

This is why Chanderpaul is just about my favourite batsman in world cricket at the moment. In terms of averages, he is thirteenth in Tests and fifteenth in one-day cricket. But though I'd say that's a fair representation of his one-day abilities, it underestimates his value in the longer game. I'd certainly have him in my World XI, batting at five or six, building on good starts or shoring up the team in times of crisis.

Sometimes good players can appear to shine because they are surrounded by mediocrity. But his Test average of forty-nine needs no justification. And it is just possible that, had he been born in Cape Town, Canberra or Chennai, we would have seen an even more impressive batsman. When he came into the national side in 1994, he was a frail but aggressive youngster who soon found himself promoted to number three. Every now and then, we see flashes of that aggression. In 2003 he came out to bat against Australia in Guyana with the score on 47-4. He proceeded to blast a century in seventy-two balls, at that time the third fastest century of all time. He has always had the ability to launch astonishing and audacious assaults at a moment's notice, an asset that has seen him spend time opening the batting in the one-day game.

But in a batting line-up featuring Lara and a clutch of flashy young strokeplayers, what his country needed was an anchor. The boy who had grown up idolising Rohan Kanhai gradually took on the role of a latter day Larry Gomes. Though he has moved up and down the order at the whim of coaches and captains, he has been most effective at five, as the backbone of the batting line-up.

His shyness meant that he was never going to be a natural captain and in most other countries, would not have had to take on the job. But in the spring of 2005, there was no-one else and so he answered his country's call. It was not a success, somewhat predictably, given his personality and the poisonous and divisive atmosphere in the squad at that time. A man of great personal courage and demanding of himself, could not communicate that toughness to a bunch of players who didn't want to be led anyway. He resigned after a year.

Since then, he has been in irresistible form. In the recently completed Test series with Australia, he was comfortably the best batsman on either side, amassing 442 runs in 6 innings. In such good touch, he is sure to be favourite to finish top West Indian run scorer in Tuesday's One Day International and you should be able to back at around [4.0]. Although he initially struggled in the fifty over game, he has improved steadily and has pulled out some memorable match-winning performances, such as the incredible run chase he led against Sri Lanka at Port of Spain earlier this year. If you think he can inspire a West Indies win in Jamaica, you can back them at [3.0]