An unsung hero

"What scared me was he said he couldn't feel his hands or feet.You don't want to see anyone get hurt. To his credit he got back up there, and batted beautifully after that."

Lee said after play about hitting chanderpaul with a vicious bouncer.

The diminutive batsman that he is, Shivnarine Chanderpaul is well known for his cricketing eccentricities and for his batting style and technique or rather for the lack of it. Eccentricities include wearing stickers just below his eyes, which he later explained as anti-glare stickers and his unusual routine of removing the bail to mark his guard at the batting crease. When he’s batting you can be pretty sure it’s only him, that is, he opens up his stance- his feet point mid-off and he looks as if he’s going to turn around to square leg, like as if he’s going to scoop over short fine leg or swing the bat like golf club.

"You're waiting for him to face up, and he already is," said Glenn McGrath.

Shane Warne once stated that he would like to bowl to him from square leg.

Sometimes he opens his stance too much, no wonder he doesn’t score much in V-region. This open, crablike stance has been criticized by many, yet he has been effective so much that he was hailed as the next best thing to happen to West Indies cricket.

Once asked he responded"I have heard all kinds of comments (about my technique). But my opinion is that if your technique is working for you, you should try and improve upon it." Chanderpaul may not be the most elegant batsman to grace the game - but he averages 46.63 after 104 Tests and 39.00 from 219 ODIs. Nobody acknowledges it because he doesn't look fancy on television, he's not outgoing, he's not flashy, but the purpose of a batsman is to get runs and he has been pretty consistent at it.Chanderpaul supposedly developed the strange stance as a way of protecting his face when his father rallied the entire village to hurl balls at him from point-blank range when he was young.

Shiv’s batting has also been termed dull, dour and full of unattractive edges and nudges, few know he scored the 4^th fastest century against the mighty Aussies. Very recently he also led West Indies to a seemingly impossible win by scoring 10 runs off last 2 deliveries. He’s also well known for batting for long periods of time, in fact holds the record for staying at the crease for more 1000 minutes without being dismissed. He has done it thrice and no one else has done it more than once. Being a middle-order bat, he has the unenviable task of batting with tail and most often he is stranded alone at the crease.

Some of his finest moments were against India against whom he scored 3 centuries in a series just after returning from an injury. It would be unfair not to mention the Eng-WI series where he scored 74, 50, 116 not out, 136 not out and 70, while the next highest score for WI in series was a distant 59. He single handedly took WI to an improbable victory in Edgbaston but unfortunately ran out of partners and as a result lost the match.

Shiv is shy, smiles parsimoniously, very religious. He’s a gutsy player along the lines of senior Waugh. So it was no wonder that shiv decided to continue batting after being felled by a Lee scorcher to reduce WI deficit. He was the last man to be dismissed and the crowd’s applause died only after it was announced that he was no longer at stadium, but has been taken to a hospital for treatment. (Personally it would have been great to be at the stadium) This inspires a young, unheralded bunch of bowlers who have the mighty Aussies reeling at 17/4. Of course, Aussies still have upper hand and the shiv inspired WI fight-back might after all be just a passing cloud. The man who made impossible possible (converting an insipid WI team into a dangerous outfit even if it is only for a short time) deserves atleast a gracious salute and for West Indies to emerge from their slump in the post-Lara era, he must go on doing it.

The crablike stance