On Saturday, the long-serving West Indies cricketer Shivnarine Chanderpaul announced his retirement from the international cricket. He was one of the famous and a respected batsman in the world.
Chanderpaul represented in 164 Tests, 268 ODIs and 22 T20Is for the Caribbean side. He scored 11,867 runs in Test cricket with an average of 51.37 runs per innings, only 86 runs short from Brian Lara’s total of 11,953 runs, who is the leading run-scorer for West Indies in the Test cricket. He is currently at no.7 in the most Test runs scorer table. He also scored 8,778 runs in ODI with the average of 41.60.
Here are the 10 interesting facts about Shivnarine Chanderpaul in the international cricket:
1. Shivnarine Chanderpaul was famous for his unorthodox batting stance along with his great batting skills. The stance was described as crab-like.
2. Chanderpaul was the first Indo-Caribbean cricketer to play 100 Tests for West Indies.
3. Chanderpaul’s highest Test score in an innings was 203*, which was made twice against South Africa at Georgetown in 2005 and Bangladesh at Dhaka in 2012.
4. Chanderpaul was well known for his defensive style batting. But in 2003, he made a hundred in just 69 balls against Australia in a Test match at Georgetown. At that time, it was the third fastest hundred (currently it is 5th fastest hundred) in the Test cricket history.
5. During the first Test between West Indies and Australia at Jamaica in 2008, a ball (the bowler was Brett Lee) had been struck at the back of Chanderpaul’s helmet and he collapsed on the pitch, remaining motionless for a few minutes. After that, he recovered quickly and resumed his innings and scored 118 runs in that innings.
6. Chanderpaul holds the record of most unbeaten centuries in Test cricket. He made 18 unbeaten centuries in the Test cricket out of 30 Test centuries.
7. Chanderpaul reached at no.1 in the Test ranking as a batsman for several times.
8. Chanderpaul had led West Indies for 14 Tests and 16 ODIs between 2005 and 2006.
9. Chanderpaul picked up 9 wickets in Test and 14 wickets in ODIs. England batsman Graham Thorpe and Sri Lankan batsman Aravinda de Silva were his first Test and ODI wicket victim respectively.
10. Chanderpaul and Carl Hooper had made a partnership of 226 runs for the fourth wicket against South Africa in an ODI match at East London in early 1999. It was the highest partnership for West Indies in the ODI cricket at that time. Later it was broken and currently it is the 3rd highest partnership for West Indies in ODI.