Last week Tuesday, prior to the start of the first semifinal of the 2022 ICC T20 World Cup, at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Australia, three new members were inducted to the ICC Hall of Fame: former West Indian Test batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul, former England Women’s Cap-tain, Charlotte Edwards and the late Pakistan Test leg spinner Abdul Qadir, the 107th, 108th, and 109th inductees, respectively.
The Tiger
I am the delightful Paradox.
All the world is my stage.
I set new trails ablaze;
I seek the unattainable,
And try the untried.
I dance to life’s music
In gay abandon.
Come ride with me on my carousel rides.
See the myriad of colours,
The flickering lights.
All hail me the unparalleled performer.
I am the Tiger – The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes/Theodora Lau, 1979
Once again, Shiv, our much revered ‘Tiger’, is receiving the recognition that he is fully deserving of, membership of Cricket’s most select club, the ICC Hall of Fame. As the 21st West Indies cricketer so honoured, he joins the much-heralded company of Sir Curtly Ambrose, Sir Learie Constantine, Joel Garner, Lance Gibbs, Sir Gordon Greenidge, Sir Wes Hall, Desmond Haynes, George Headley, Michael Holding, Rohan Kanhai, Brian Lara, Sir Clive Lloyd, Malcolm Marshall, Sir Viv Richards, Sir Andy Roberts, Sir Gary Sobers, Courtney Walsh, Sir Clyde Walcott, Sir Everton Weekes and Sir Frank Worrell.
Honours and accolades are nothing new to Tiger, and he has received a multitude over the course of his international career. In March 2009, Tiger was bestowed with our third highest National Award, the Cacique Crown, and in October 2018, the University of the West Indies bestowed him with an Honorary Doctor of Laws. In 2008, he was awarded the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy after being voted ICC Cricketer of the Year and selected by the Wisden Cricketers Almanac as one of the Five Cricketers of the Year. At the WIPA Awards ceremony in the same year, he swept the West Indies International, Test and ODI player titles. There were also several Guyana Sportsman of the Year awards.
One is tempted to summarise Tiger’s career with the vast number of statistics he has produced. The numbers resemble extracts from the notes of a fiction writer preparing a tome on a schoolboy prodigy who lives up to early promise. At the tender age of 17, he notched 90 in the second innings of his first-class debut match; one year later he hit his maiden first-class century for West Indies President’s XI versus Pakistan at GCC, Bourda, his home ground. In March 1994, he replaced injured local hero (Carl Hooper), and became the ninth teenager to represent the West Indies in Test cricket. In a career lasting 21 years, he represented the West Indies in 164 Test matches, most by any player, compiling 11,867 runs (second only to Lara), with 30 centuries, at an average of 51.37 per innings. The ODI numbers are equally astounding: 268 matches, 8778 runs, 41.60 average. He also played in 385 first-class matches, posting 27,545 runs whilst averaging 53.17 runs per innings, with 77 centuries and 144 fifties.
Whilst the numbers may be mind boggling, they don’t convey the complete picture. It was never a bed of roses for Tiger, in fact, it was more akin to a runaway roller coaster, ups and downs, replete with personal disappointment. Despite a solid start, six fifties in his first seven Tests, the diminutive left hander couldn’t command a regular place in the batting line up during the initial years. Then there were the issues of injuries and illnesses in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which made him unavailable for 17 Test matches. There was the acrimonious dispute between the West Indies Cricket Board and the West Indies Players Association, which thrust him into the unsought role of captain. He was let down by some senior players who dissed him for opting to play rather than boycotting the 2005 tour of Sri Lanka. While lesser mortals might have quit, Tiger pressed on.
Once Tiger voluntarily relinquished the captaincy, preferring to focus on his batting, an unparalleled pattern of reliability and consistency emerged. Following the departure of Lara in 2007, as the West Indies continued its slide into the abyss of international cricket, never has so much been asked of a West Indian batsman, since perhaps, Headley in the 1930s. Tiger evolved into the living embodiment of Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’:
“If you can keep your head when all about are you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; …”
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same”
As the team’s slide into oblivion accelerated, Sobers wryly observed that the West Indies had only one Test player. While no one else seemed capable of performing on a consistent basis, Tiger continued like good wine, getting better with age, while persistently frustrating the varied bowling attacks of the opposition. It was a stark transformation from the first third of his Test career, where he could only muster two centuries in 53 matches. After scoring three centuries in four matches against India in 2006, it was plain sailing. In a three-year period between 2006 and 2009, he scored seven centuries, and 14 half-centuries at an average of 73+ in 23 test matches.
There was hardly a phase in Tiger’s career from there on when he did not churn out runs by the bushel. In 2012, in his 38th year, when most players’ careers are on the wane, he became the second West Indian to reach the significant milestone of 10,000 test runs in his 148th Test match against Australia. That year he averaged 91.7, scored three hundreds and a double century, despite not getting enough support from the batsmen around him, as was the case for most of the second half of his career.
Tiger’s approach to batting has been the subject of many analyses and dissertations, searching and probing for the source of his brilliance and longevity. Hailing from the tiny fishing village of Unity on the East Coast Demerara, Tiger’s awkward-looking stance at the wicket has spawned analogies from the vernacular of ocean life. As he appeared to be facing the bowler square-on, commentators frequently applied descriptions of ‘crab-like’ and ‘crustacean’ and compared his impenetrable defence to the stubbornness of barnacles. Rather, his unorthodox stance should immediately have prompted comparisons to Headley, who also favoured (what was described in his time as) a ‘two-eyed’ position, or of more recent vintage, India’s Mohinder Amarnauth. While few (if any) coaching manuals might have endorsed that approach, Tiger, forever his own man, never tired of reminding his critics that it was working for him.
Blessed with immense powers of concentration and a relentless work ethic, nobody in recent memory has worked harder than Tiger at honing his craft. Six-hour sessions alone facing a bowling machine were routine. Tiger’s explanation was simple: ‘if you want to bat for a whole day you should practise for a whole day.’ As the only batsman in Test history to go more than 1,000 minutes between innings before being dismissed on four separate occasions, it’s hard to argue with his logic.
The memories Tiger has given West Indies cricket fans are too numerous for this column. Everyone will have their own favourite moment. Here are a few highlights: the 69-ball, blistering hundred against Australia at Bourda in 2003, the third fastest Test century at the time; his rear guard hundred, 104, in the highest successful fourth inning run chase in Test cricket in Antigua in 2003, whilst batting with a broken finger, and holding the innings together in the 2004 ICC Champions Final – everyone only seems to remember Browne and Bradshaw bringing it home – when the West Indies were floundering at 72 for four.
The carousel ride is over, but Tiger’s exploits will live on. We miss the trademark marking his guard with a bail, the black anti-glare patches under the eyes and kissing the pitch on completing a century. We miss his never-say-die attitude, humbleness and willingness to sign autographs and pose for photographs with the adoring fans. We will forever miss the torch bearer for West Indies cricket during one of its darkest periods. We are grateful for the memories. Congratulations to Tiger on his admission to the ICC Hall of Fame in the Year of the Tiger.
