Batting Was Everything
A Look At Shivnarine Chanderpaul
Andre Agassi hated tennis. That, at least, is what he claimed. In his 2009 autobiography, Open, he recorded this: “I play tennis for a living though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, always have.” And yet, in spite of his stated dislike for the sport, and in spite of his emphasis on appearance in his more youthful days (“Image is everything,” went his ad campaign for Canon cameras), Agassi became one of the greatest tennis players ever, remaining at the top of the sport for 20 years, winning Olympic gold and numerous other titles.
It was his father, an Olympic boxer, who pushed him into the sport, placing a racket in his hand as a toddler and insisting on hours of training at their Las Vegas home. Before long, Agassi gave up formal education and was enrolled in an elite tennis academy in Florida, his future decided for him, more or less, by his father.
In Unity Village in Guyana, probably a few years after Agassi’s, a story with some similarities unfolded. Khemraj Chanderpaul, fisherman and cricket devotee, placed a bat in his son’s hand almost as soon as he could stand. Before he was ten, little Shivnarine, coached incessantly by Khemraj, was squaring up to much older bowlers. To “toughen him up” the elder Chanderpaul encouraged fast bowlers to bowl short to his son, inflicting bruises aplenty on his frail frame. And so the youngster learned to never back down; he learned to always return to his feet, no matter how many times he was struck to the ground.
Cricket was placed above everything, including education, and like Agassi with tennis, Chanderpaul had his formal schooling interrupted to focus on cricket. Like the tennis star, Chanderpaul stayed at the top for over 20 years and was one of the sport’s great players.
Coming from contrasting backgrounds, however, there were also striking differences betweenthe two athletes. Chanderpaul never sought to cultivate a celebrity persona; in truth, he hardly seemed to care about his image at all. But, more significantly, Chanderpaul loved cricket, or, to be more precise, he loved batting.
Batting was everything. The left-hander therefore thought about it intensely and practiced it assiduously, pushing himself to the outer limits of his capabilities. Chanderpaul’s strength of character was such that it enabled him to plot his own path. The technique he developed was not aesthetically pleasing, but there is little doubt about its effectiveness.
Typically, great West Indian batters don’t overindulge in defensive play. To recall names like Headley, the three Ws, Kanhai, Sobers, Richards, and Lara is to summon images of batters dictating terms to even the best bowlers. Chanderpaul was not of that genre. Whereas those players thrilled the crowds and kept the scoreboard racing with full-bloodied strokes to all corners, Chanderpaul nudged, tapped, deflected, guided, glided. If he were, on the whole, less compelling to watch, he was frequently as effective. He might not have done his job with as much aplomb, but he did it well just the same.
That is not to say the Guyanese was limited in range; he was the proprietor of almost every stroke in the book, as he showed in his 69-ball century at Bourda in 2003, or during his 1996 assault on Shane Warne at Sydney that was only ended by what the legspinner claimed was perhaps the best delivery of his career. It should also be remembered that there was a time when he opened the batting in One Day Internationals (ODIs) and his scoring rate was far from pedestrian.
Yet it was evident that Chanderpaul took to heart a simple and timeless truth of batting: the longer you occupy the crease, the more runs you are likely to score. Only Geoffrey Boycott (190.59) and Rahul Dravid (189) faced more deliveries per innings than Chanderpaul (181.65), and the West Indian has stood undefeated (49 times as opposed 32 for Boycott and 23 for Dravid) on more occasions.
In spite of Chanderpaul’s adhesive qualities the West Indies were not a winning team throughout most of his career. But how much worse would things have been if the game’s most tenacious blade were not available to the Caribbean side? How many more games would they have lost and how much worse would some of the losses have been?
Some years ago, after a particularly terrible tempest totally devastated parts of Texas in the United States, there was a spot with one isolated, upright building amid the sea of ruin – the one structure that survived the full fury of the storm. I took that image as a metaphor of Chanderpaul playing a lone, defiant hand at one end while total chaos reigned at the other. Indeed, the Guyanese left-hander often stood as the solitary combatant protecting West Indian pride; the single warrior left standing after others had fled or had fallen.
It is rather unfair, then, to see how frequently he was castigated as selfish. The often- made charge is that Chanderpaul only really cared about Chanderpaul: his runs, his not outs, his high average. Admittedly, there have been times when he probably should have tried to impose himself more on proceedings. I accept, however, that to some sizable degree, Chanderpaul might have compromised flexibility in favour of solidity, and that his adopted methods, on the whole, served himself and his team well for many years.
In the same way that we have to accept that the forthright batter will be dismissed attempting aggressive, even reckless shots, we should also accept that the stonewalling batter would forgo scoring opportunities, and like the shot maker, would refrain from diverting from his usual habits. The player that changes his game according to the circumstances should be admired, but in this difficult business of Test-match batting you can scarcely fault a man for sticking to the approach that made him successful in the first place.
Undoubtedly, Chanderpaul had an outstanding career. He scored almost 21000 international runs with 41 centuries. In Test runs scored for the West Indies he is second – by only 86 runs -- to the batting genius, Brian Lara. It is unlikely he has many regrets. If, while a youngster in Unity Village playing against much older men it were somehow revealed to him that he would grow up to be one of the best batters of his time, he’d have been overjoyed. Agassi implied that he played tennis only because it afforded him a good living. Chanderpaul, I am convinced, if he had to, would have played for free.