NEW DELHI, India, CMC- Former India captain Rahul Dravid has praised the consistency of veteran West Indies middle order batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul, describing him as an exceptional batsman.
The 40 year-old Chanderpaul recently returned to the top three of the ICC Test batting rankings, following his heavy scoring against Bangladesh in the recent two-Test series in the Caribbean.
“You only have to look at his numbers. The sheer weight of them over the length of his career – which is not a short one,” Dravid was quoted as saying in ‘Modern Masters’, a video series by ESPN Cricinfo.
“He’s been consistent, exceptional in all conditions.”
The Guyanese batsman has jumped two places to number three and now lies only behind the top-ranked Kumar Sangakkara of Sri Lanka and South Africa’s AB de Villiers.
He completed his 30th Test century during the Bangladesh series and also had scores of 84 not out and 85 not out.
“One of the things you probably forget about him is the sense of the style and the way he plays. He’s not really played in a strong team,” said Dravid.
“He’s played in an era when West Indian cricket hasn’t been at its best so they haven’t had a lot of success as a team. A lot of his runs have been scored when West Indies have lost.”
Chanderpaul, now in the twilight of his cricket career, has so far played 158 Test matches having scored 11,684 runs with 30 centuries.
He played 268 ODIs till 2011 scoring 8778 runs with 11 hundreds.
“The way he’s able to manoeuvre balls of spinners into gaps was something that stood out,” the former Indian skipper noted.
“Standing in slips, you’ll be able to see that Chanderpaul is able to turn his wrists at the last minute to people like Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble and just find the gap when he needed to”.
