Guyanese Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan are close to achieving career landmarks in the first test against New Zealand which got underway yesterday (last night Caribbean time).
The dogged left-hander Chanderpaul needs only 32 more runs to leapfrog Sir Garry Sobers on the all-time list for the most test runs by a West Indian batsman.
When the great `Sir Garry’ ended his career in March/April of 1974 with scores of 0 and 20 Chanderpaul was still in his mother’s womb.
He was born some four months after the master had put away his bat for the last time.
New Zealand last evening won the toss and batted and Chanderpaul will have to wait until it is the West Indies’ turn to attempt to reach that milestone.
Possibly the great `Sir Garry’ will be watching.
This is Chanderpaul’s 113th test match as opposed to the 93 test matches taken by Sobers to accumalate the 8,032 test runs.
Sobers’s runs came from 160 innings.
He averaged 57.78 and had a highest test score of 365 not out which stood as the world record for almost 30 years before it was broken by Brian Lara.
Sarwan too, is close to a landmark, that of 5000 test runs.
He has 4889 test runs from 72 test matches with a highest score of 261 not out and needs another 111 more runs to reach the milestone.
If he does manage to achieve the feat in this his 73rd test match and 130th innings, he will be joining countrymen Carl Hooper (5762), Rohan Kanhai (6227), Clive Lloyd (7515) and Chanderpaul (8001).
