Tiny In Size, But Never In Fight: The Quietly Dignified Fighter Called Shivnarine Chanderpaul

Gautam Buddha, the Enlightened One, said, ¡°We are a result of what we have thought.¡± Let¡¯s make it simple, ¡°We tend to become what we think.¡±

Easy?

Likewise, we tend to believe what history teaches us in the guise of ¡®useful lessons,¡¯ never really questioning the quote that¡¯s stood the annals of time. One of the things that history has dictated us is that it is is made by the victor.

After all, everyone remembers the one who stood first. Not an awful lot is spared for the one who came second.

An ideal example in cricketing lexicon would be to recollect the events of St. John¡¯s, Antigua, 1994.

The man who captured public imagination back then was Brian Charles Lara, who by virtue of his 375, went beyond Sir Sobers¡¯s 365 as he shattered a world record and made globetrotting headlines.

Indiatimes

While it¡¯s true that it¡¯s Lara who everyone remembered, what one didn¡¯t, was the man who was batting at the other end.

Someone who went about doing his job of giving company as quietly back then as he did for 21 more years that followed: Shivnarine Chanderpaul.

The man who¡¯s just turned 47 today, the man who is clearly an anomaly in the vital lesson history wanted us to learn.

If no one cared about who came second, the one who didn¡¯t always ¡®win,¡¯ or ¡®capture headlines,¡¯ why¡¯s it that the little Guyanese is still remembered?

So much so that his cricket board, one that rather unceremoniously axed the man identified as the great servant of the game, much like the ICC, has bestowed messaging on social media on Chanderpaul¡¯s birthday.

Why¡¯s it that each time a West Indian batsman falls to an appalling shot, going for the skies when remaining on the ground would¡¯ve saved him, whether in executing a mistimed heave or an overenthusiastically-executed flog when simply leaving out the ball alone would have sufficed, the name of Shivnarine Chanderpaul is recollected?

Perhaps there¡¯s sense in retreating back to simplicity, ever more so in an age fuelled by histrionics and hype, glamor and the search for glory.

In the half a decade since his retirement from the game, which he painted with nearly 21,000 collective runs, Shivnarine Chanderpaul doesn¡¯t command a monument outside the Cheddi Jagan International Airport.

There¡¯s no mixologist anywhere in a Bourda club that can fix you a Shiv ¡®Tiger¡¯ drink, in the honour of one of Guyana¡¯s finest gifts to West Indies cricket.

Nor is there a cricket stadium named in the honor of a batsman who always put his team above him, let alone an isolated stand.

Remember Darren Sammy, with 12,000 fewer Test runs and 29 fewer hundreds than Chanderpaul even has his own perfume label and has become nearly an adopted son of Pakistan.

So what does Shivnarine Chanderpaul have that we must remember him?

AFP

Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who arrived in the game when the likes of Prithvi Shaw, Shubhman Gill, Nicholas Pooran, Shimron Hetmyer, weren¡¯t even born, was a member of a team that had begun to experience bumps, despite having exceptional talents like Lara, Richardson, Hooper, Ambrose and Walsh.

With Sir Viv already a thing of the past and no Greenidge and Haynes around anymore, it was up to a young generation of West Indians to drive the game forwards.

And while Brian Lara excelled through flamboyance, Chanderpaul took a far sedate approach to batting- that of being the balancer, the partnership-builder, the inning-repairer, and whilst being all of this, a match-winner.

More grit instead of fist-pumping glory, the reluctance to rub his victory on the others¡¯ face became his side of the story.

Moreover, it didn¡¯t take long for the Bourda- batsman to get going. In the first year of his Test inning, he averaged 50. Next year, he inflated it to 77 before experiencing a dip in 1996, where he averaged 49.

But by this time, a young Chanderpaul was also ready to face the ire of bowlers no smaller in stature than Waqar and Wasim, Kumble and Murali, Vaas and Pollock, Donald and Kallis in white-ball cricket.

And much like elastic that can be bent, extended, shaped however one wants, Chanderpaul, ever-the selfless bloke did whatever his team expected of him.

Among the many things one remembers of the 1996 Wills World Cup is Lara¡¯s princely 111 against South Africa, a knock of high quality that sent one of the favourites packing in the quarter final.

What one doesn¡¯t care to remember, sadly speaking, is the man who paved way for the Lara special- the opener who crafted a 56 off 93, building a canvass for Lara to colour with applying dexterity and versatility in stroke making.

How the two batsmen complemented each other could well be understood by a simple everyday instance by simply looking at the relation we humans share with drinking water.

Can we do without it?

Chanderpaul¡¯s greatness, unsullied by what might have been massive frustrations with his team in a perpetual state of decline since 2000s, is exemplified by the fact that he never lost his cool in the middle.

Not even when the great Brian Lara retired, though not before Ambrose and Walsh called it a day, leaving the bulwark of run-scoring on the man who perhaps a Dravid and Younis Khan would highly sympathize with and may even tip their hat to.

Despite being heavily overshadowed by the Prince of Trinidad, Chanderpaul never put up with a sullen face, which is when he averaged much higher than Lara did against his great nadir- India.

With an average of 63, having struck 7 of his 30 Test hundreds against the very opponent that troubled cricket¡¯s enigmatic genius, Chanderpaul showed a way to tackle India, which Lara failed to imitate: to wear the bowlers down.

Maybe that was his way, albeit in stark contrast to Lara¡¯s, who presided over with an instinct for domination.

And yet, series after series, the nineties and the mid 2000s were painted by headlines that today read nostalgic- ¡°Lara and Shiv rescue West Indies.¡±

Long before the West Indies even became a nickname of sorts in ¡°Windies,¡± as if one struggled with a paucity of time to even pronounce the proper name of a bastion of cricketing greatness, Chanderpaul added to the sport by lending some bits of his personality- total devotion to the team¡¯s cause and unrivalled simplicity.

Caring little for whether he was given his due or wasn¡¯t, he went about scoring runs against the best of teams by applying undulating focus displaying the great appetite for a battle.

In 1999, barely a few days after West Indies¡¯ incomprehensible 5-nil whitewash by the Proteas under Lara¡¯s captaincy, Chanderpaul found himself and his team in a disadvantageous position having lost the 1st of the 7-ODI series in South Africa.

In the second game, however, where even Lara failed with a 3 off 21- let that sink in- the Guyanese joined forces with his compatriot Carl Hooper to push up the team to an indomitable 292. Of these, he compiled 150 exasperatingly beautiful runs on his own, whilst facing the wrath of Pollock, Klusener and Kallis.

Chanderpaul¡¯s phenomenon has less to do with fan-groups fighting off each others¡¯ heads in trying to prove their supremacy over the other and more to do with things today¡¯s generation often discards: the good old virtue called patience.

One with which he amassed 11,800 plus runs, ending only 86 shy of Lara¡¯s tally.

But Chanderpaul, who even won a final-over ODI by launching into a mighty six versus the Sri Lankans in the Caribbean, must be celebrated for his consistency more than the epithets one spends time over, such as ¡°the man with a crab-like technique!¡±

One year after Lara left the scene, Shiv¡¯s Test average was 111. The next year 101. And in the final 3 years of his career prior to the unceremonious axe in 2015, he averaged 71, 58, and 98 respectively, the latter as a 38-year-old.

Interestingly, while our focus remains more on the way Chanderpaul took his guard by marking it with the bails he hand lifted from the stumps, where we ought to focus- but don¡¯t- is his physical fitness and mental toughness, which allowed him to play cricket¡¯s longest format for 22 long years which is no joke.

Yet, the adage that good things come to those who wait also seems true to this under appreciated giant of the game, in whose regard, it may not be incorrect to use the phrase- a colossus of Caribbean Cricket.

So how¡¯s that?

In 2003, with his team set a daunting 418, something that hadn¡¯t been chased in a fourth inning of a Test ever, and has never been repeated since, Chanderpaul allied with Sarwan ensuring the Windies did the unthinkable.

His own contribution was a belter of a century.

Against the same opponent, and at home crowd, he fired a 69-ball-century, a world record, proving he was more of a creature of adaptability than the mundane run-of-the-mill narrative.

When West Indies demanded him to open alongside Hinds or Gayle, he agreed.

When the asked him to roll his arm over occasionally, he never shied away.

When he was asked to captain, he did so, circa 2005 against Pakistan. In an important Barbados Test, which Lara had set the perfect tune to courtesy his majestic 130, Chanderpaul chipped in with a 92, before firing 153 in the next inning.

How could someone not say an ill word, throw temper or just lose mental balance whilst lasting for 447 deliveries in a Test?

Well, then not everyone is Shivarine Chanderpaul; not everyone is willing to go uncelebrated, seldom protesting the ignorance harshly meted out when a sterling record beckons much grander celebration and acceptance than warranted.

Isn¡¯t it?

That we care more about the massive distance a Gayle and Russell six travels to and less about the fact that there was once a West Indian batsman who faced 27,395 deliveries in Test match cricket alone goes to show the era to which we belong and the priorities we¡¯ve set.

While the new age fan may still be curious to know more about the dark stickers Chanderpaul wore under both eyes, not so much about his dogged Lord¡¯s ton (when Sachin and Lara failed to hit one), what matters is that there was a man who fought on for the West Indies knowing well that he wouldn¡¯t be celebrated all that much after all.

And it¡¯s in this monk-like abstinence from collecting praise and sitting over laurels where rests Shivnarine Chanderpaul¡¯s glory, one that wove patiently and diligently, over after over, the dying art of saving matches and also becoming its leading story.

(vs SA, Aus, Eng, Chanderpaul fired 5 Test centuries each, hence 15 of his 30 Test hundreds).

The writer is a freelance sports writer based in New Delhi.