One must know how to use a resource for the purposes of success

Aug 14, 2008 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
I read with tremendous disappointment, one Randolph Joseph Eleazar’s letter in SN’s Thursday edition, August 07, 2008, pushing to banish the Region’s most committed cricketer at this time from the West Indies (WI) One Day International (ODI) team.

It is most unfortunate that this gentleman gave no statistics or supporting analysis to justify his sole dramatic call for Shivnarine Chanderpaul to play only in Test matches.

He further outrageously accuses Shiv of selfish batting in ODIs, without providing back-up information.

Using available data and benchmarking, one method to analyse the ‘Tiger’s’ approach to ODIs is the use of strike rates, averages and batting positions.

In Chanderpaul’s 221 ODIs his average strike rate is 70 while his batting average is over 40 in a variety of batting positions.

The earlier Shivnarine bats the more he scores and his strike rate improves – for scores 50 and above, his strike rate jumps to almost 85.

While this may happen to other successful top order batsmen around the world, in the WI context, the most consistent performer, Chanderpaul, languishes at # 5 in the middle order. His best strike rate comes at # 6, his best average is at # 3 while all of his eight hundreds were scored in positions # 2 and # 3.

In the context of an underperforming team, Randolph should have suggested the ‘Tiger’ bats instead at a higher position allowing him the time (which he has earned!) to construct a solid innings for the later onslaught.

What also went missing from the writer’s few lines to the editor is that the WI team and management are failing Shivnarine (and consequently the WI) by not having him bat earlier.

With an increasing strike rate and batting average it is possible, yes it is, to see an improvement in the team’s performance.

You see Randolph, in team sports when a team member performs individually well, as the benchmarks above suggest, he knowingly or unknowingly plays for his team. Would Randolph provide the evidence and analysis of the “many matches and series” the WI lost “because of this (Chanderpaul’s supposed) ploy”?

In a list of 30 international players topping the 40 average mark in ODIs, Shiv’s strike rate is similar or higher than at least eight star players: Jacque Kallis, Dean Jones, Gordon Greenidge, Botha Dippenar, Javed Miandad, Nick Knight, Chris Broad and Desmond Haynes.

Also among players world over, Chanderpaul’s ODI notably ranks # 25, co-incidentally on par with his contemporary, Brian Lara.

With the two great openers of the 1980s and 90s WI team earning strike rates below Chanderpaul’s, I cannot recall any Randolph Joseph Eleazar at the time blurting out such utterances about slow batting.

You see how different it is when (Haynes and Greenidge) playing in a side of seven top batsmen and four top class fast bowlers, how easy it is to miss these details! Surely Randolph you are not implying the current players in the WI team are just as sublime as their previous counterparts of the eighties/nineties!

I would watch every cricket match if seven ‘Tigers’ played at once for the WI. When you have a resource, one must know how to use it for the purposes of success! To do otherwise by grasping at the gravy train is an indictment to Caribbean people.

Very often we chide the sole performer, as Sachin Tendulkar has experienced in earlier Indian teams and to some extent Brian Lara in the West Indies, for not pulling out miracles day in day out for their weakened teams.

Maybe the power outage experienced during Chanderpaul’s heroics in the recent Sri Lanka ODI series seriously disrupted our ODI following.

I am a little bit disappointed by the recent National Award to Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Arrow of Achievement. At minimum the Cacique Crown of Honour should have been bestowed on this true gentleman of WI cricket.

Nevertheless we see the waves this achievement has started to create and I must compliment Shiv on the many sacrifices he has made as a cricketer, a person and a leader.

The latter well demonstrated when he took a second eleven (11) WI team to Sri Lanka, amid chaos and unprecedented volatility, to save the WI from potential expulsion from international cricket and major costs overruns.

Congratulations though for being one of five Wisden cricketers of 2008 and on your national award and to the government for acknowledging one of Guyana’s finest. You’re a true son of the soil.
Ramesh Persaud

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