Vin­ode Mam­chan

Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul is a leg­end in the sport of crick­et to my mind but I think he has stayed on far too long and in the end he would leave crick­et as a play­er who did not time his ex­it as well as he did many of the 27,395 balls he faced in Test crick­et.

The left han­der is hang­ing around Test crick­et at the age of 40, and 277 days and count­ing, as he need just 87 more runs to sur­pass Bri­an Lara and be­come the lead­ing run scor­er for West In­dies in Tests. Lara hung-up his bat at 11,953 runs dur­ing his ca­reer and Chan­der­paul has 11,867 at the mo­ment. He was cho­sen to play against Eng­land re­cent­ly but failed mis­er­ably, as he did in South Africa (av­er­ag­ing around 16 in the two tours).

The ques­tion now is whether the West In­dies se­lec­tors should be emo­tion­al and pick him, a de­ci­sion that would him to pass Lara's record, or will they think 'Team' first and get one of the young play­ers in­to the team for the two Test match­es against Aus­tralia.

Just as the South Africans did, the Aus­tralians will be com­ing here to bounce Chan­der­paul out. He has to re­alise that he does not pos­sess the re­flex­es he once had and no one can blame him, hav­ing spent 40 Christ­mases on earth.

One might ar­gue that no one is break­ing down the door to come in and re­place Chan­der­paul but I think the left han­der should call it quits and al­low the se­lec­tors to move on and bring in new blood.

I think that the se­lec­tors should be brave enough to say to Chan­der­paul that he was served crick­et won­der­ful­ly well but it is time to move on. I hope and pray that he moves on and does not try to hang around and spoil what was a great ca­reer. He wants to be re­mem­bered as the man who saved West In­dies many times in bat­tle and not one that went to war and could not as­sist.

I am off the view that this cur­rent West In­dies se­lec­tion pan­el has the will pow­er to face the wrath of Chan­der­paul's fans and axe him for the up­com­ing se­ries, if he does not make way him­self.

If he is not cho­sen, one has to un­der­stand that se­lec­tors can­not be emo­tion­al. A man just scored 354 not out in the Eng­lish Coun­ty Cham­pi­onship and has been told he has no fu­ture on the Eng­land team. This tells me that the Eng­lish man­age­ment has de­cid­ed to look af­ter the in­ter­est of team and not in­di­vid­ual. Kevin Pietersen is seen as a man who can af­fect team uni­ty and has been told that for 'trust' rea­sons he can­not play for Eng­land again.

I have no­ticed a change in the mood of West In­di­an ad­min­is­tra­tion in re­cent times. They have de­cid­ed to take a hard­line ap­proach af­ter the In­di­an fi­as­co and one can­not re­al­ly blame them. When Dwayne Bra­vo and Ke­iron Pol­lard were dropped from the West In­dies team, their fans were mad, how­ev­er one has to un­der­stand that no play­er is big­ger than the game and must face the con­se­quence of child­ish be­hav­iour.

Back to Chan­der­paul, at the end of the day this West In­dies team is not good enough to be 'car­ry­ing' a play­er. So what if Chan­der­paul does not break Lara's record? Af­ter all isn't Lara West In­di­an and got his runs in 33 Tests faster than Chan­der­paul? What is the big fuss over this record that Chan­der­paul is chas­ing? Well for me it makes no sense re­al­ly be­cause if you look at the stats Lara will still be miles ahead.

I wished Chan­der­paul had scored more runs against Eng­land and not be­cause I want­ed him to sur­pass Lara's record, but help the West In­dies be­cause with a lit­tle help from him, we could have saved the Grena­da Test and win the se­ries.

I am sor­ry but for me, team in­ter­est al­ways comes first and while I ad­mire Chan­der­paul as a great ser­vant of West In­dies crick­et, I think that the time has come for him to pass his bat un­to Tag­nar­ine and as­sist him, rather than con­tin­ue.

The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) must ho­n­our this man. Dave Cameron and his boys must get to­geth­er and give him a mean­ing­ful farewell and start a new era of car­ing for play­ers who don the ma­roon cap. They must not al­low Chan­der­paul to walk away emp­ty hand­ed for all he has done for Caribbean crick­et.

Last year, Cameron made it a point to ho­n­our for­mer WICB pres­i­dent Dr. Julien Hunte for his con­tri­bu­tion to crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tion and this tells me that they are mov­ing in a di­rec­tion that would see grat­i­tude over pow­er un­grate­ful­ness. Bye Shiv it you are and will al­ways be a gi­ant in West In­dies

crick­et.