The man of a 1000 cuts

According to the ICC, the number 1 ranked Test batsman in the world is not named Ponting, Sangakkara, Tendulkar, Sehwag, Smith, or Pietersen. Not surprisingly, this anonymous soul is happy that the attention is elsewhere.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul is content to let preening alpha dogs like Kevin Pietersen hog the limelight while he toils away in a mediocre West Indian batting line-up. His road to the top has been a long and arduous one (as is almost everyone else's, true) but especially so since his shy nature and interesting batting style does not lend itself easily to reams of poetic prose, to coin a phrase.

Only 6 batsmen in the history of Tests have batted more than a thousand minutes between dismissals. Chanderpaul, the only man to do it more than once, has done it a mind-boggling 4 times! He is the only one to go more than 1500 minutes, and during that span he faced more than 1000 balls (the only one in the 1000 ball club, incidentally). In fact, that 1500 minute span came against the 2001-02 Australia team, no less!

And he is not just a blocker. One day, he scored the 4th fastest Test 100, off just 69 balls, that too in the first innings against Australia!

Talking to Anna Kessel of The Observer, Chanderpaul shows why he is more than content to let the others around him hog the limelight. Though, the mention of one person does raise his shackles and bring out the hidden fury in him.

There are few subjects that will shake Chanderpaul out of his private world, but Kevin Pietersen is one of them. The two batsmen are polar opposites – Pietersen loves the limelight, Chanderpaul detests "glamour"; Pietersen loves to take risks, Chanderpaul would rather stay at the crease. They meet again at Lord's on Wednesday as England take on West Indies. At the mention of KP, Chanderpaul's face grows very dark. On the recent West Indies tour Pietersen took a swipe at him, accusing him of "playing for himself". It was a comment that Chanderpaul did not take lightly.

"You can't assume or think someone's just playing for themselves. I don't know where he gets his stories from … I can't be playing for myself when I'm in Trinidad trying to save a match. Scoring 140 and I'm playing for myself?" Chanderpaul's expression is one of utter disgust.

Did Pietersen's comment make him angry? "What he said just motivated me more. It definitely made me better at what I was doing. If people come at me I just want to make sure that I can be out there even longer. You get angry and you just want to grind somebody out there longer, that's how I do my job." Chanderpaul folds his arms, his outburst a rare moment of expression.

By the way, I am waiting for a day when an article on Chanderpaul will be written without his crab-like batting stance being mentioned even once (oops, I just did it, too). The photo at the top of this post was taken from an article in The Age that discusses his stance.