http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/current/story/354224.html

Made in Guyana

Shivnarine Chanderpaul is a self-made man and player, shaped by 
circumstances and will, his technique not so much odd as original

June 11, 2008

Shivnarine Chanderpaul provides a notable counterpoint to the 
contemporary game. At once he is inimitable and timeless - no more a 
product of his period than a kitchen clock, and yet not a creature of 
the past either, for he has scored runs yesterday and today and will 
score runs tomorrow. Just that he goes about it in his own sweet and 
deceptively frail way, relying on deflections and glides, hands as 
opposed to forearms, a wand as opposed to a tree trunk, persuasion and 
perseverance as opposed to power. He is a rubber man put among concrete 
pillars. In short, he is a reminder that, even now, cricket has many 
faces and talent can take many forms.

It has taken a boy from a distant fishing village to remind us that 
sporting technique cannot be pinned in a book like a dead butterfly or 
refined into a mathematical formula. Chanderpaul's career shows that an 
ambitious sportsman can defy the straitjacket of conventional thought 
and even scientific analysis and still make his way in the game. Except 
that "defy" is the wrong word because the left-hander has no defiance in 
him, is too modest and uncertain to confront anything beyond his own 
circumstances.

Nevertheless, from the outset he has been extraordinarily bold. At the 
very least he has ignored accepted wisdom, dared to walk into the world 
from a remote outpost as his own player and his own man. Perhaps it was 
that he knew no other way, or perhaps it is that he knew more than he 
let on. In any event he has demonstrated that a player blessed with 
ability and determination, and prepared to follow his own instincts, can 
develop his own game and take it with him on the long journey. It is the 
half-baked who fall short.

Typically, he has crept up the batting rankings till, almost unnoticed, 
he has reached fifth place, the highest perch attained in an impressive, 
occasionally interrupted career. Nor is he far adrift from the top 
position. Of course, his inspired performances against the Australians 
in the last few weeks, and especially his match-saving innings in 
Antigua, lie behind his recent climb, but the deft 33-year-old has been 
in full flow all year. Altogether he has played eight Tests in the last 
12 months, and has collected 1635 runs in the three formats at an 
average of 86.05. Along the way he has added six centuries to his tally. 
Nor has he punished mugs. Besides the Australians, these runs have been 
scored against England and South Africa in their own backyards. It is a 
mighty achievement.

Of course it is the finest patch in a startling and sometimes stirring 
career, but Chanderpaul is hardly an overnight sensation. To the 
contrary, he has been an outstanding batsman for a decade. His rise is 
not remotely fortuitous or even unexpected. Simply, it has been an 
exposition of proven technique and resolute temperament. Chanderpaul has 
been scoring lots of runs for years, most of them in the face of the 
adversity that has long gripped West Indian cricket. Indeed, he has 
displayed laudable immunity to the forces of distraction, destruction 
and downright incompetence that have often swirled around him. Always he 
has moved along at his own pace in his own way. At times he has been a 
tortoise, on other occasions a hare, but always he has been staunch and 
skilful. His entire career tells of durability.

By no means is Chanderpaul's rise a surprise. His position reflects the 
work of a singular batsman with a calculating mind and a strong insight 
into the requirements of batsmanship. Productivity has been his aim, 
intuition his guide. His game is more organised than it seems. At the 
crease he resembles a puppet guided by an unseen hand, constantly 
moving, apparently at random, yet every part of the body knows its role 
and its location, and almost always he ends up in the right place at the 
right time, whereupon he essays the shot of his choosing. Chanderpaul's 
technique is not so much odd as original. But then it is the product of 
his wits and not an outsider's words. It is not so much that he turned 
his back on orthodoxy. The introduction was never made.

In any case, even by the most rigid standards the boy from the fishing 
village does an awful lot right. Most particularly, he watches the ball 
as does a mother hen her brood. Late movement might trap the unwary but 
the left-hander is not so easily foxed. He knows the trickery of the 
world and the cunning of bowlers and the blindness of umpires, and takes 
no risks save those of his own choosing. He is also an extremely 
disciplined batsman, not prone to flights of fancy or premeditation or 
the other follies of the mind. He does not indulge himself in wayward 
thoughts or headstrong outbursts. Rather, he goes quietly about his 
business, trusting no one except himself, giving the game its due, 
always aware of the cost of carelessness.

Accordingly it is a mistake to dismiss him as a curiosity, a batting 
version of Muttiah Muralitharan or John Gleeson. Apart from anything 
else, batsmen must obey certain rules, must meet certain challenges. 
Bowlers have the luxury of pleasing themselves. It is not possible for a 
seriously flawed batsman to sustain high-class performances in the best 
company. Sooner or later the weakness is exposed and the novice sent 
packing. Rather than patronising an unusual batsman with gasps and 
sighs, it is wiser to seek a better understanding of his game. Fragility 
can be in the eye of the beholder. Viv Richards' leg-flick was possible 
because he straightened his front leg at the time of impact, allowing 
his bat to stroke the ball. The shot was much less daring that it 
seemed, though just as intimidating. Likewise Virender Sehwag's game is 
built on solid foundations. His defence is excellent; it is his 
optimistic shots that periodically bring him down.

It's the same with Chanderpaul. He is an excellent batsman and always 
has been. Otherwise he could not have lasted as long or produced as 
consistently. His technique was honed in a geographic - but not 
cricketing - backwater. Admittedly Unity Village did not have advanced 
facilities or proven coaches, let alone dieticians, psychologists or 
sponsors. But it did have plenty of fishing nets, tidal waters and 
willing assistants. Chanderpaul persuaded fellow villagers to hurl taped 
tennis balls into the dying waves of the nearby sea and practised 
swaying and weaving, and eventually hooking, the fastest bumpers. 
Finding the ball flying at his head the lad learnt to react quickly and 
choose wisely. Otherwise he spent long hours batting on a rough and 
ready pitch prepared on the village green, a location not nearly as 
dainty as it sounds. Villagers took turns to bowl at the ankle-biter, 
and spare fishing nets stopped them having to fetch the ball. 
Chanderpaul also went into the local hall to practise his shots on 
concrete. The family had heard that Rohan Kanhai had practised this way, 
and he was a more relevant guide than any stiff Englishman with a high 
left elbow and plonking feet. Accordingly Chanderpaul developed a 
fertile, reliable and well-understood technique. Maybe it is better to 
build a game this way than against a bowling machine.

And so the boy emerged and became a man. But it goes further. 
Chanderpaul is not merely as good as his figures indicate. He is better. 
As much can be told from the stunning, thrilling attacks that he 
occasionally launches, often against the Australians. An exhilarating 
onslaught in Sydney was ended by a delivery from Shane Warne that landed 
in the next parish before hitting his leg stump. And there was another 
exuberance against the same opponents in Guyana where, with his team 
against the ropes, he unleashed an astonishing counterattack, scoring 
one of the fastest hundreds Test cricket has known. The Australians were 
amazed. They had always regarded him as a batsman hard to dislodge. Now 
they were startled to find that he could also take them apart when the 
mercurial mood was upon him and the circumstances permitted it.

As much as the excellently constructed scores against strong attacks on 
dubious surfaces, it is these innings that are the mark of the man. 
Certainly they have been too few and far between to allow him to be put 
alongside the greatest batsmen of the age but they have hinted at the 
extent of his powers. To some degree Chanderpaul has been restrained by 
the forces that made him. Although he has scored consistently, he has 
few big tallies to his name. Close observers suggest that a skinny boy 
raised on fish as opposed to meat lacked the strength required to bat 
for days. Had Chanderpaul been able to turn a few of the centuries into 
doubles or trebles, his record would be even more formidable. Mind you, 
Sachin Tendulkar and Steve Waugh also produced few massive totals and no 
chicken was safe when they were around.

Insecurity has been Chanderpaul's other limitation. It cannot have been 
easy for a boy of Indian origin, from a remote village in a struggling 
and latterly unfashionable country, to make his way in West Indian 
cricket. From the start he knew he had to score more runs than anyone 
else just to get noticed. To that end he put his head down, and kept it 
down. His fears have taken another form as well, making him especially 
sensitive to the sort of niggles and soreness and other frustrations 
that a man more confident of his destiny would sweep aside. Over the 
years he has missed more matches or innings than seems entirely 
appropriate. Doubt plays tricks with the mind. Blessed with more stamina 
and certainty, Chanderpaul might have surpassed all contemporaries. But 
no one is perfect, all must struggle in one way or another, or else 
sport loses its challenge and its charm.

Nonetheless Chanderpaul has made a magnificent contribution. If not 
always the most pleasing, he has been the most satisfying West indian 
batsman to watch in recent years. It has been a human journey, flawed 
and fascinating, and along the way he has earned the respect that he 
craves and deserves. Although lacking the force of personality needed to 
hold the team together, he has often prevented the batting from falling 
apart. Perhaps the bad times were his making. After all fishermen, like 
farmers, are a resilient lot. Certainly they do not expect more from 
life than it is prepared to offer.

Peter Roebuck is a former captain of Somerset and the author, most 
recently, of In It to Win It


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