Hats off to 'Unbowlable' Chanderpaul

By Rico

Shivnarine Chanderpaul is not counted among enterprising cricketers of his generation. He is not one of the most gifted either. He is known for having one of the crabbiest techniques in world cricket, infamous for his unorthodox front-on batting stance .

But, he is amazing stuff. If there is one cricketer who has an unwavering concentration and keeps on improvising all the time, that is Chanderpaul. He would use soft hands, canny deflections, a whiplash pull-shot and what not, if they produce runs.
He has for long been the Mr Dependable of West Indies side. If a Brian Lara or a Chris Gayle are stylish strokemakers, Chanderpaul is a grafter and accumulator. When every other more enterprising compatriots fail, he is supposed to play the sheet anchor's role.
He was simply ''the unbowlable'' in England this summer. He batted 17 hours and 40 minutes without being dismissed, scoring 446 runs from three Tests and averaging 148.66 with two unbeaten centuries.
Michael Vaughan considers Chanderpaul's 116 not out in the third Test, which almost won the game for West Indies, as the finest Test innings he had ever seen.
His explosive form in the Twenty20 and ODI exploits (202 runs from three matches with one hundred) led his coach David Moore calling him one of the most versatile cricketers in the world.
During the third Test against England, he crossed 7,000 run mark, the seventh West Indian and 30th batsmen in the world to have done so.
In his 104-Test career, he has scored 7182 runs. And with age in his side, the unassuming left-handed Guyanese, who turns 33 in August, has every possibilty to become the third West Indian to score more than 8,000 runs when he retires. He can even go past the great Sir Vivian Richards' 8,540 Test runs.
A healthy average of 46.63 in Test, better than Desmond Haynes, Gordon Greenidge, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Gayle and 6975 runs at an average of 38.96 from 221 ODIs.
So folks, please welcome Chanderpaul in the pantheon of all-time greats.

Image: search.tvnz.co.nz

Graeme Hick: Colossus in County, underachiever in international arena

By Rico

At last, Graeme Hick had something to cherish when on June 17 he became the 16th batsman to have scored 40,000 first-class runs in the County Championship Division One match against Warwickshire at Edgbaston.

Hick's career has been a unique story. He is a colossus in county cricket, where he continued to churn out the centuries in his sleep for life-long county Worcestershire but never shone in international arena.

He was chosen at 16 years of age for the 1983 Zimbabwe World Cup squad, but did not play in the mega event. He had to wait until hewas 25 and had already made 57 first-class hundreds to play international cricket for England. In 1987, he was named as one of Wisden's five Cricketers of the Year, mainly on the basis of his county record.

By the time he burst into international scene, public interest in his seeming destiny as a great batsman was intense. He was considered England's Great White Hope and even compared with Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara. But, Hick had a disappointing England career.

He was given a hero's reception by the crowd when he came out to bat in his Test debut at Headingley on June 6, 1991, against the fearful West Indian pace attack. A tortured 51 minutes later, he was back in the pavilion having made only six and his weakness against body-threatening ultra-quick deliveries badly exposed. He was dropped after scores of 0, 43, 0, 19 and 1.

He went on to play 65 tests over a decade, in and out of the England side, scoring 3383 runs at an average of 31.32 with six hundreds and 18 fifties.

Hick's failure in the international arena has been attributed to the perceived technical flaws in his game. He is suspect against the short ball. Atherton felt as early as 1991 that Hick was ''good, but not in the Lara or Tendulkar class.''

Some, like Shane Warne and Ian Botham, felt Hick was the victim of poor man-management -- a player who had been messed around and should have been handled differently.

Steve Waugh opined Hick's success at county, in turn, ruined him as his technical weakness went untested in a ''largely innocuous'' county bowling environment. Hick's international career has been the tragic story of a prodigy turning a cropper, but now he will have at least something to tell his children and grandchildren.

The 40,000 club members: Jack Hobbs (61,760), Frank Woolley (58,959), E H Hendren (57,611), CP Mead (55,061), W G Grace (54,211), Herbert Sutcliffe (50,670),Walter Hammond (50,551),Geoffrey Boycott (48,426), T W Graveney (47,793), Graham Gooch (44,846), T W Hayward (43,551), Dennis Amiss (43,423), Colin Cowdrey (42,719), Andrew Sandham (41,284), Len Hutton (40,140), Graeme Hick (40,000)

Image: nobok.co.uk

Eat your words, Mr Holding

By Joe

Dwayne Bravo's recent remarks about Brian Lara offering advice to the beleaguered side provided me with the food for thought. "Anything going wrong with our batsmen, whether it be Chris Gayle or Devon Smith, if he can't get hold of them, he will pass it on to me. He told me to keep my head up and to pass on some information, as far as batting was concerned, into the dressing room," Bravo said.

This reminds me of Michael Holding, baying for Lara’s blood right in the middle of the side’s World Cup captain. And the reason?

LARA IS NOT A TEAM MAN.

Lara has often been accused of being selfish, aloof and, well, a genius. But then what did Holding expect? Lara never got the team he deserved. Day in and day out, he was expected to do the bail-out job and every time he failed, thirsty knives were out. Holding should consider himself immensely lucky. He was part of the four-pronged pace battery. In case he failed, Roberts, Garner and Marshall were there to knock the life out of the opposition.

And the likes of Greenidge, Haynes, Richards, Rowe, Kalicharan and Lloyd ensured there always were enough runs on the board to defend. In contrast, Lara was the lone tree among the shrubs. Surrounded by a bunch of perpetual pretenders, it is rather intriguing how he could motivate himself. In the absence of a teammate who could motivate him, Lara probably drew it from inside and kept going.

Holding thrived partly because of the team he had. Lara, inspite of it. If he was not seen hobnobbing with his team mates in the team bus and practice, it was no wonder either. Genius needs to guard itself from the corruptive influence of mediocrity. Holding has seen the pomp and hence is ignorant of the plight.

Fast bowlers are often seen as heavy-booted, galumphing nitwits, clumsily charging down with a hulk of leather in the palm. For sure, Holding, in his heydays was not among them. In fact his swan-swift action earned him the ‘Rolls Royce” moniker. A pacer par excellence, he has proved a disaster of a commentator and Bravo’s comments only underlines that Holding has lost his marbles.

(Picture source: Getty Images)