I have been writing about Shivnarine Chanderpaul for more than twenty years, even before he played Test cricket. And I have been watching him bat for longer than that, when he was a schoolboy in the old days when I used to go to the GCC regularly and often sat down with drink in hand to look at Club cricket. It was at one of those Club matches I remember, sitting next to one of Bourda’s old stalwarts who might have been watching cricket there for fifty years, and seeing with him this frail schoolboy studiously and skilfully and staunchly playing out over after over from a couple of quite expert bowlers with assurance and time to spare, hearing the old man say, with an approving shake of the head, the prophetic words: “See that one there – he going to make bowlers cry!” Yes indeed.
Just past the age of 40 Chanderpaul has fashioned what must now be seen as one of the
