Shivnarine Chanderpaul CCH (born 16 August 1974) is a Guyanese cricket coach and former captain of the West Indies cricket team. Considered one of the greatest batsmen of his era, Chanderpaul is the 10th highest run scorer of all time in International cricket and the 9th highest in Test cricket. Chanderpaul was a member of the West Indies team that won the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy, and in the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy Final, he had the highest contribution for West Indies with the bat, scoring 47 runs.
Chanderpaul captained West Indies in 14 Tests and 16 One Day Internationals. A left-handed batsman, Chanderpaul is well known for his unorthodox batting stance, which has been described as crab-like. He scored 20,000 runs in international cricket, and in 2008 he was named as one of the five Cricketers of the Year by the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, and awarded Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy (ICC Cricketer of the Year) by the International Cricket Council.
He made his international debut at the age of 19, but did not score a century in international cricket for three years, prompting some criticism. Early in his career, he was plagued by injuries, and was even dubbed a hypochondriac until he had a piece of floating bone removed from his foot in 2000. After that he enjoyed consistent form, scoring over 11,000 runs in Test cricket. Chanderpaul was dropped from the West Indies squad in 2015. He announced his retirement from international cricket in 2016, without a farewell, at the age of 41.
He is currently serving as head coach of the USA senior women's and the USA Under-19 women's teams. In November 2022, he was inducted to the ICC Hall of Fame. He was also awarded the Cacique's Crown of Honour, the second highest award in the Order of Service of Guyana, in 2009.
Early life and domestic career
Shivnarine Chanderpaul was born to Hindu Indo-Guyanese parents Kamraj and Uma Chanderpaul in Unity Village, Guyana on 16 August 1974. His father, Kamaraj Chanderpaul, helped to nurture his cricketing ability as a youngster. His ancestors emigrated from India to British Guiana as indentured labours under the Indian indenture system. By the age of eight, Chanderpaul was playing for his village's cricket team, and would frequently bat for hours, being bowled at by various members of his family. His father initially took him to the Everest club in Georgetown, but there was not a place for him at the club, and so he instead joined the Demerara Cricket Club. He appeared for the club's under-16 team while only ten. He was later given an opportunity at the Georgetown Cricket Club.
He made his first-class cricket debut for Guyana at the age of 17, facing Leeward Islands in the 1991–92 Red Stripe Cup. He was run out for a duck in his first innings, but scored 90 runs in the second. His List A debut followed a few days later, against Barbados, in which Chanderpaul did not get a chance to bat in a match with no result. He achieved his maiden first-class century in April 1993, playing for the West Indies Board President's XI against the touring Pakistanis. After taking four wickets in the Pakistanis' innings, Chanderpaul was one of three West Indians to score a century, scoring 140 runs, and remaining not out.
During this time, he achieved the highest first-class score of his career, in a 1995–96 Red Stripe Cup match against Jamaica. In the first-innings of the match, which was eventually drawn, he scored 303 not out from 478 deliveries. In 2007, he subsequently joined Durham as an overseas player, and helped the club collect its first major honour by top-scoring in their 2007 Friends Provident Trophy final win.
In March 2008, Chanderpaul caused some controversy when, after batting for Guyana on the first day of a Carib Beer Series match, he left to attend the WIPA awards, and did not arrive to play the following day. He was 78 not out when he left the match, without notifying his team's manager or coach. He was recorded as retiring out on the scorecard, and later returned on the third day. At the ceremony, Chanderpaul was very successful, winning three awards as the international, Test and ODI cricketer of the year.
During the English summer of 1993, Chanderpaul travelled with the West Indies Under-19 cricket team to England. He was the team's most successful batsman during the Test series, scoring 372 runs at a batting average of 124.00, including a score of 203 not out in the first Test, at Trent Bridge in Nottingham. In the 1993–94 Red Stripe Cup, Chanderpaul was near the top of the batting averages, and, according to the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, he was a "contentious selection" for the subsequent Test series against England, in which he was picked as an all-rounder who could bowl leg breaks as well as bat. He bowled 16 overs in England's first innings without taking a wicket, and scored 62 runs in the West Indies reply. Chanderpaul played four Tests during his debut series, and was third amongst West Indian batsmen in terms of both runs scored and batting average, getting 288 runs at 57.60.
Over the following couple of years, Chanderpaul was in and out of the West Indian Test team, missing a visit by Australia altogether.
In his first 18 Test matches, Chanderpaul scored 1,232 runs at an average of 49.28, but despite scoring thirteen half-centuries, his highest score was 82; a Test century eluded him. He reached the milestone in his nineteenth Test, scoring 137 against India. Just over a month later, he repeated the feat in One Day International cricket, striking his maiden century in the format, scoring 109 runs, also against India.
Chanderpaul scored a further century in each of 1998, in a Test match against England, and 1999, in an ODI against South Africa. In the latter match, Chanderpaul and Carl Hooper were the only West Indian batsmen to reach double figures while batting – Chanderpaul scored 150, and Hooper reached 108. Their partnership of 226 was, at the time, a record in ODIs for the West Indies, and Chanderpaul's individual total is his highest in ODIs. During this early period of his international career, Chanderpaul suffered with a negative reputation. Along with his failure to convert half-centuries into centuries, he had a tendency to miss matches which was perceived as hypochondria. He was also in the news for late-night partying; on one occasion in 1999, he shot a policeman in the mistaken belief that he was a thief. His career took a turn for the positive in 2000, when he had surgery on his foot to remove a floating bone.
Free of his foot injury, Chanderpaul enjoyed the best series of his career to that point when he scored centuries in three of the five Test matches against India. In addition to his centuries, he also scored three half-centuries, and batted for a record 1,513 minutes between dismissals. The following year, against Australia, Chanderpaul scored a century from 69 balls – which at the time was the third fastest Test century. Later in that same series, the two teams scored exactly the same total in their respective first innings, and Australia then reached 417 in their second, leaving West Indies requiring 418 runs to win. No team had ever successfully chased that many runs to win in a Test previously; writing for Cricinfo, Andrew Miller reported at the end of the third day that "Victory [for the West Indies] is as unlikely as ever, but it remains a remote possibility." On the final two days, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Chanderpaul—batting with a broken finger—both reached centuries, and the West Indies completed the record run-chase with three wickets remaining. He subsequently suffered what ESPNcricinfo described as "an indifferent run"; despite scoring centuries against South Africa and Bangladesh, he averaged just over 35 across eighteen innings, of which six were against either Bangladesh or Zimbabwe. Facing England at Lord's, Chanderpaul narrowly missed out on a century in both innings in July 2004. He remained not out on each occasion, scoring 128 runs in the first innings, and 97 in the second, but the West Indies were beaten by over 200 runs in the contest.