Shiv - and the captaincy
By Pryor Jonas
Stabroek News
May 24, 2003
One of my young men-a Lara fan like myself, and a fan of Hooper's too-took a permissive break from his CXC to ask me to write some more on this question of captaincy.
He was prepared, he said, to do the necessary research. And he did! Good for him! Good too for the young in our midst-though not really for Singulara (he has had his chances, hasn't he? After all, this is a very competitive age).
But what about the Tiger? "Tyger, tyger burning bright/ In the forests of the night/ What immortal hand or eye/ Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
I'm referring, as you must know by now, to Shivnarine Chanderpaul, and would like to repeat my question to the Board-though it must embarrass quite a few: why was Jacobs appointed vice-captain of the West Indies team when Chanderpaul was his senior both in length of service and in quality of performance?
Yes, why? The privilege was mine umpteen years ago to captain one of our better school teams, and I soon found out that the first prerequisite of a cricket captain is that he must know the Law.
By the way, young man, how many Laws of cricket are there? Next is what we used to call cricketing savvy. You get it not just from reading but from talking with old-timers.
One of these days I'll recount a story Mr Fernandes told me. A good captain decides on his fixed batting order, which he changes only when common sense rules that he should, as, for instance, when a wicket falls during the last over before end of play.
A good captain rings his bowling changes according to his instinctive feel for the game because of his cricketing savvy. C.B. Fry-a very successful England captain himself-once rated his contemporary Plum Warner as among the four best captains he had met because, "He always put on the bowler that I disliked most."
In other words, Warner was constantly doing his homework. Having found out your weakness, he would put on the bowler who could best exploit it. But, you know, it's in field-placing and general team management (both on and off the field) that we see a good captain at his best.
This is where Clive Hubert excelled. Lloyd recognised also that any champion team must have a solid trio of opening batsmen and at least three fast men. Most importantly, no one must be a sluggard in the field.
The "Supercat", as they called him in his prime, would set the example. So he could train his men until you had fast bowlers taking off miracle catches, and opening batsmen concentrating in the slip cordon. Rarely would a catch be dropped.
After our Sri Lankan visitors will have come and gone, I will take up this whole theme of captaincy again.
Certainly, Test cricket nowadays does make immense demands on the man at the helm. Certainly, too, we ourselves have been very fortunate in that in both Hooper and Lara we have had two captains whose place in the side could never be questioned. Competence, then, is a sine qua non, but to competence must be added experience.
A good captain doesn't talk much. If and when he does, his words give his team that quiet confidence which draws from them the dedication and all-out effort that leads inevitably to victory. Again-and again.
Tiger has three strokes for every ball
If Carl Hooper has been the most maligned of cricketers of his and, I suspect, any generation of West Indies Test players, then surely Shivnarine Chanderpaul is the most disrespected. Why is it that we treat him with such condescension? Is it simply because of his limitations where education is concerned? Or fluency of speech? I surely hope it doesn’t have to do with ethnicity. Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
We call him “Tiger”, you know, those of us, that is, who knew him from his boyhood. And because of his natural gifts for batting (for all-round cricket in fact, because he can bowl and field, though not given much of a chance to do the latter), let’s study his batting technique.
One of the characteristics of the great batsman is how still he is prior to the delivery of the ball. Shivnarine Chanderpaul, in his primary stance at the wicket - that is, before the bowler delivers the ball - exemplifies that cat-like stillness.
For his secondary position, Shiv’s first move is to shift his left foot across to the middle stump, where, with a not-so-high back-lift, he watches the ball very closely. He is all concentration now. If the ball is pitched right up between wicket and wicket, he moves the right foot forward, and plays a defensive forward stroke. This, of course, is at the beginning of his innings. But when he’s twenty or so, that defensive forward stroke, because of his steely wrist play, could very well hasten to the boundary. If the ball is of a good length, he plays it back, which is the easiest thing to do from this secondary stance of his. If the ball swings at all from leg, and he sees it will not hit the wicket, Shiv then leaves it severely alone.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul, at the start of his innings, will not play any ball which will miss his off stump by a whisker; and he is in the best position - middle stump to middle stump - to judge. Should the ball swing from the off, say from off-wicket to leg, he plays with a dead straight bat, his right shoulder up. It is interesting to observe the position of that right elbow of his, but only the purists would notice this. If it is at all possible (the great Jack Hobbs said it wasn’t), Shiv watches the ball right onto his bat, and plays it quietly in front of him. But should he see that the ball will miss leg stump by the slightest margin (and you will agree that no one can judge these things better than from in front of that middle stump), with the same straight bat he watches the ball right on to the blade, and is in control of it as he steers it away on the leg side.
This is, as I see it, the foundation of an almost impregnable defence. Shiv’s vantage point is in front of that middle stump. Being there he’s master of both ball and bowler. Really the bowler has nothing to do with the ball now. I believe that the Tiger at his best has three strokes for every ball. Singulara alone has a wider repertoire than Shivnarine Chanderpaul.
