**Official** West Indies in England 2012

[uvelocity]

I want to see what the new guy bowls like

 

[Burgey]

TBF, Marsh has and Cowan will soon enough.

True, Marsh looks like Ian Bell a few years back. So it's plainly all over for him.

 

[Burgey]

I think Holding, much like many experts, tends to suffer from generational bias. Its fair game to put some of the players that he played with or against on a pedestal, because the reality is that he played during one of the most gifted decades in international cricket. And he does have a point that Chanderpaul bats for himself more than he does for the team. But I'd be hard pressed to understand the logic behind Dez Haynes rated as a better player than Chanderpaul. Nothing backs it up. Whether Chanderpaul has a Type A or Type B personality doesnt detract from the fact that he has been consistently scoring runs all over the world in all seasons. The guy is playing against arguably the best bowling attack in the world currently in their own backyard and still has a * alongside his name and deserves whole load of credit for it. The fact that he is nearly 38 and has been doing the job for nearly 20 years is not something to be taken lightly.

Des Haynes was a pretty ****ing decent player mate. I wouldn't say he's in any way out place in a comparison with Chanderpaul.

Here's one of the stats lads pondering this vital question....

 

[tooextracool]

Des Haynes was a pretty ****ing decent player mate. I wouldn't say he's in any way out place in a comparison with Chanderpaul.

Here's one of the stats lads pondering this vital question....

Absolutely, Dez was a fine player, though it is common knowledge that he played the Robin to Greenidge's Batman. There are some fundamental holes in Haynes career accomplishments, not least that he couldn't score a run in the subcontinent till the late 80s.

Few people tout Haynes as a great anyways. He was one half of one of the greatest opening partnerships perhaps, but my gut feeling is that Chanderpaul, like Kallis, doesnt really get the credit that he deserves because he doesn't have the eye-catching, swash buckling tendency to play an absurd shot out of the blue to capture the masses of spectators that have fallen in love with the likes of Kevin Pietersen and Mark 'I'm going to poke at a ball outside off stump for no reason but it still looks freaking beautiful' Waugh.

 

[Arachnodouche]

I just dug my gmail archives and this is a mail I'd sent a friend back in '08 when Chanderpaul was in the middle of some freak streak.

"He has scored 1635 runs and 6 centuries in the last 8 Tests . :O Against Eng and SA away from home and the current Australian series.

Bradman's record was 975 runs in 5 tests in the 29-30. Add 3 tests to that and you still have to score 660 runs more! That is a freaking astounding stat that nobody in my memory has rivalled. Maybe Lara when he was scoring all those triple hundreds but still....that is stupendous."

 

[Hurricane]

Only watched the 1st hour last night. But it was enough to appreciate once again how much I adore watching test cricket. Wonderful bowling. Some good batting by Barath.

Then I switched off will watch a decent amount tonight.

 

[Jono]

I just dug my gmail archives and this is a mail I'd sent a friend back in '08 when Chanderpaul was in the middle of some freak streak.

"He has scored 1635 runs and 6 centuries in the last 8 Tests . :O Against Eng and SA away from home and the current Australian series.

Bradman's record was 975 runs in 5 tests in the 29-30. Add 3 tests to that and you still have to score 660 runs more! That is a freaking astounding stat that nobody in my memory has rivalled. Maybe Lara when he was scoring all those triple hundreds but still....that is stupendous."

Shiv is a run scoring beast. Plain and simple.

 

[flibbertyjibber]

Shiv is a run scoring beast. Plain and simple.

This, he may not be as good as the likes of Viv and Lara and may rank lower than some of the 70's and 80's players as they "WON" more games but how would they have fared with this side over the last 5-8 years?

A fairer comparison I guess would be with Andy Flower, continued brilliance amongst the crap that is your teammates and singlehandedly keeping your side competitive in many matches is no mean feat.

 

[CWB304]

I think Holding, much like many experts, tends to suffer from generational bias. Its fair game to put some of the players that he played with or against on a pedestal, because the reality is that he played during one of the most gifted decades in international cricket. And he does have a point that Chanderpaul bats for himself more than he does for the team. But I'd be hard pressed to understand the logic behind Dez Haynes rated as a better player than Chanderpaul. Nothing backs it up. Whether Chanderpaul has a Type A or Type B personality doesnt detract from the fact that he has been consistently scoring runs all over the world in all seasons. The guy is playing against arguably the best bowling attack in the world currently in their own backyard and still has a * alongside his name and deserves whole load of credit for it. The fact that he is nearly 38 and has been doing the job for nearly 20 years is not something to be taken lightly.

What do you mean when you say that "nothing backs it up"? IMO lots of things back up the considered opinion that Des Haynes was a better player than Chanderpaul. In fact I reckon that most knowledgeable persons who've watched them both play against truly high quality bowling would not only disagree with you, but retort that the only thing that supports the view that Chanderpaul is better are the same stats which would also suggest that he is a better player than Viv Richards himself, when the world and his mother know different.

If you look at Chanderpaul's two-decade Test career it is very notable that his average and ability to convert starts into centuries in the first decade or more were not at all remarkable. In fact, whilst the really good bowlers whom I hope I don't need to list here were around, he was seen as a pretty average player; his career would probably have ended halfway through with him averaging in the low 40s had he been playing for a Test team with greater playing reserves than the WI of that time. It was only once the bowlers who had caused him so much trouble retired or began to lose effectiveness in the second half of his career that he became the grim runscoring machine we know today. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Too, the question of his universally-acknowledged selfishness cannot simply be swatted away on the grounds that all batsmen are selfish. Involved in twenty two run outs, yet only three times the one given out in such situations? Those are the statistics almost of a sociopath, not of a guy whom other players would look upon with affection, or look to for leadership.

It amazes me when idiots have accused his great compatriot and contemporary Brian Lara of selfishness. I dont think I've ever seen a less selfish and more generous player, one who would quite literally shed blood, sweat and tears to help his team - and thrill the crowds while doing so. I've lost track of the number of times I've almost shed tears of joy watching Lara cut loose when batting with the tail. Each and every time the prince would be the last man out - having flayed the ball to all parts in a thrilling forty-minute coda with the tail in his inimitable calypso style -, yorked or caught on the boundary. His blood was up; his average be damned: he was playing for the team; he was playing for the game; he was playing for the crowd; he was playing for the glory!

In each and every such situation the likes of Tendulkar and Chanderpaul - players who think like accountants and who don't realize that massaging one's figures by carefully accumulating not outs has never yet deceived the public - would push and nurdle the singles and twos and wait for the tailenders to get themselves out and play for their averages. Don't believe me? Check the not out stats for Lara; compare them with those of Chanderpaul, Tendulkar and other cricketing personalities whose figures would be substantially different had they adopted a more team-oriented approach to batting with the tail, running between the wickets etc. And then ask yourself: whom do we remember with more genuine affection? Who thrilled us more?

The late great Spurs' double-winning captain Danny Blanchflower once said of another sport:

"The game is about glory. It is about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.” I suspect that Chanderpaul genuinely wouldn't understand those words. Which is at least in part why, for all his impressive stats, he will never be held in the same regard, or even be regarded as being as effective - when that word is comprehended in the round -, as players such as Greenidge and Haynes, whose stats he has surpassed.

 

[Spark]

It's also worth pointing out that the whole pieces-of-bone-in-his-foot thing definitely hampered him for the first part of his career, to be fair.

 

[Arachnodouche]

That runout stat is a quirk of nature. Maybe his partners were slow, reluctant, what have you, or maybe he is just a poor judge of a run.....it's analogous to the ridiculously low number of times a fat guy like Ranatunga was run out over his career...8 times, when you'd expect him to be run out every other innings almost.

Everything else you said about Lara, I wholeheartedly agree with.

 

[vic_orthdox]

Just because a Ranatunga is/was not a beacon of fitness doesn't mean he gets run out. There's far more to running between the wickets than that, and to draw such a conclusion is ridiculous.

 

[Arachnodouche]

Just because a Ranatunga is/was not a beacon of fitness doesn't mean he gets run out. There's far more to running between the wickets than that, and to draw such a conclusion is ridiculous.

Precisely, so he must've been a great judge of a run. Maybe Chanders isn't, hardly reason enough to call him a self serving sociopath.

 

[Flem274*]

If anything being a bit podge means you run the risk of being slightly more boundary reliant than the average batsman because you're not sharp enough for the quicker singles.

Inzy and Jess come to mind, though they made finding the gap to the boundary look so easy.

 

[vic_orthdox]

Precisely, so he must've been a great judge of a run. Maybe Chanders isn't, hardly reason enough to call him a self serving sociopath.

No, but I think it's a result of his mindset of batting, same with Watson. They are so self-involved as batsmen that they have little regard for what is going on around them and it can negatively affect the team.

 

[Spark]

Chanderpaul is probably the most obvious example of a "bubble" batsman. He bats the way he bats and damn if anything is going to get in his way. I heard today that when Chanderpaul bats, to him the entire game for him boils down to his own batting, and it seems to fit. It's served West Indies well over the years, but yeah it'll lead to awkward incidents such as selling Bravo down the river, taking a single off the 1st ball of the last over of the day when the #10 is at the other end etc.

I think selfish is a bit pejorative to use in this context. I don't doubt at all that Shiv sees this type of mindset as the best way he can serve the team, but in his view if he's going to bat this way, because it is very much a mental thing, he has to do it properly.

 

[vic_orthdox]

It's also the mindset that you rarely see someone bat within when they are in a successful team. Now, it wasn't his prime, but I don't think that it's a coincidence that he wasn't as successful in times when Windies were more competitive; really, the more they've had to rely on him, the worse he's played. Even looking at Gayle and the Windies in Australia a few years ago, he set up the games and Chanderpaul struggled when he had to play the game, rather than play to how he knew best.

 

[Spark]

Trott has done it OK at times tbf.

 

[Flem274*]

I've seen Chanderpaul go after the bowling. He's hardly Mark Richardson.

If anything I'd say he lacks the mid-tempo. He's either slow or (and this happens less often) all guns blazing.

 

[Spikey]

maybe bravo should have just called