Dear Editor,
Please grant me some space to express how I feel about Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s omission from the West Indies team to play against Australia in the first Test match in Dominica next month.
I’m in the National Park jogging one afternoon and my friend says. “You know who that is?” and I said “No.”
He said that is Chanderpaul. I stopped jogging to watch this West Indian cricket icon. He was all alone, no coach, no partner. He was doing ‘suicides.’ If you don’t know what a suicide is I will explain. You do short sprints, touch the ground, then sprint back in the opposite direction, touch the ground again, etc, repeatedly. As a table tennis coach and former national champion (1979-81) I know Shiv was doing this with a purpose. Running between the wickets and chasing down balls, same motion. Self-discipline has no short cuts. This is what he has. This is what all champions have. It is hurting me deeply to see what Clive Lloyd and his panel are doing to Shiv. Tell me why was only the last six innings of his career used in their assessment? Is that a rule? Why not the previous 12, or 18, or 24. Get the picture?
I would hope that there is no malice involved on the part of the selectors in their omission of Shiv.
Letting Tiger play his final two Test matches before his home crowd would have been a fitting send-off, record or no record. Which of our current batsmen can compare to Shiv? None.
Yours faithfully,
Colin France
