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Friday, May 23, 2025

Chanderpaul stars with double as 33-year-old record falls

by

Sports Desk
837 days ago
20230206
Tagenarine Chanderpaul celebrates his double hundred on Monday’s third day of the opening Test against Zimbabwe.

Tagenarine Chanderpaul celebrates his double hundred on Monday’s third day of the opening Test against Zimbabwe.

BU­L­AWAYO – Tage­nar­ine Chan­der­paul con­vert­ed his maid­en Test hun­dred in­to a splen­did dou­ble, and com­bined with cap­tain Kraigg Brath­waite to shat­ter West In­dies’ 33-year-old record for the open­ing part­ner­ship, as the Caribbean side took charge of the open­ing Test against host Zim­bab­we on Mon­day.

With the rain which had plagued the first two days of the con­test stay­ing away, Chan­der­paul and Brath­waite ex­ploit­ed the favourable con­di­tions at Queens Sports Club to pro­pel West In­dies to an im­pos­ing 447 for six de­clared in their first in­nings.

The 26-year-old Chan­der­paul, in on­ly his third Test, fin­ished un­beat­en on 207 af­ter re­sum­ing the morn­ing on 101. He faced 467 balls in just shy of 10 hours at the crease and struck 16 and three six­es, be­com­ing on­ly the 10th West In­dies bats­man to turn his maid­en Test cen­tu­ry in­to a dou­ble.

Brath­waite, mean­while, un­beat­en on 116 at the start, made 182 – his sec­ond high­est Test score and falling just short of a sec­ond dou­ble hun­dred in Tests. All told, his knock spanned 312 de­liv­er­ies, a shade over eight hours and in­clud­ed 18 fours.

Re­sum­ing the morn­ing with their side on top at 221 with­out loss, the pair ex­tend­ed their open­ing stand to 336 – march­ing past the West In­dies record of 298 set by leg­ends Sir Gor­don Greenidge and the Most Ho­n­ourable Desmond Haynes in 1990 against Eng­land.

The part­ner­ship was al­so the ninth high­est-ever Test open­ing stand and the first in ex­cess of 300 in near­ly a decade.

When West In­dies even­tu­al­ly de­clared dur­ing the sec­ond ses­sion, Zim­bab­we pro­duced a strong fight­back cour­tesy of 30-year-old right-han­der In­no­cent Ka­ia, who stroked an un­beat­en 59 in an open­ing stand 63 with fel­low debu­tant Tanunur­wa Makoni, who made 33.

How­ev­er, once the stand was bro­ken, West In­dies picked up three wick­ets for 51 runs to re­duce the hosts to 114 for three at the close – still 333 runs adrift head­ing in­to Tues­day’s fourth day.

“The en­tire team en­joyed see­ing Tage, scor­ing not on­ly his first hun­dred but con­vert­ing that in­to a dou­ble. It is some­thing re­al­ly spe­cial not just for him but for the en­tire team,” in­ter­im head coach An­dre Co­ley said af­ter­wards.

“The fact that we’ve lost so much time in the game, we felt we would still give our­selves a chance to get wick­ets on a pitch as we have seen is good for bat­ting.

“The fact that we’ve tak­en three wick­ets is quite good. Ob­vi­ous­ly we’re feel­ing good that we were able to get some ear­ly in­roads in­to the bat­ting but it will re­quire lots more dis­ci­pline from us to­mor­row, to en­sure that we are able to main­tain the pres­sure.”

Anx­ious to make up for the time lost to rain, Brath­waite lift­ed the game’s tem­po from the start, lash­ing three suc­ces­sive fours in the morn­ing’s third over from left-arm seam­er Richard Ngar­a­va and tak­ing an­oth­er two off seam­er Richard Ngar­a­va, a few overs lat­er.

He raced to 163 at the first drinks break but be­came the in­nings first ca­su­al­ty with lunch on the hori­zon, lbw miss­ing a sweep at left-arm spin­ner Welling­ton Masakadza.

Chan­der­paul reached his 150 about half-hour be­fore lunch to be un­beat­en at the in­ter­val on 161, and added 37 for the sec­ond wick­et with Kyle May­ers who blast­ed two six­es in 20 from 24 balls, be­fore per­ish­ing in the penul­ti­mate over be­fore the break.

The left-hand­ed Chan­der­paul, dropped ear­li­er on 150 off 25-year-old leg-pin­ner Bran­don Mavu­ta (5-140), was hand­ed an­oth­er life off the same bowler off the first ball af­ter lunch. He made his chances count, mov­ing in­to the 180s by punch­ing Mavu­ta to the mid off bound­ary and then inch­ing through the 190s, spend­ing 22 balls over nine runs.

How­ev­er, he reached his dou­ble cen­tu­ry in style when he ad­vanced to Masakadza and struck him for a straight six, in the first over af­ter the drinks break.

Al­most un­no­ticed, Mavu­ta cleaned up Ray­mon Reifer (2), Jer­maine Black­wood (5), Ros­ton Chase (7) and Ja­son Hold­er (11), to claim a first-ever five-wick­et haul.

Ka­ia, who has so far struck nine fours off 115 balls, then part­nered with Makoni to take Zim­bab­we safe­ly to tea on 21 with­out loss be­fore pac­er Alzarri Joseph got the break­through on the stroke of the hour fol­low­ing the re­sump­tion, May­ers pouch­ing Makoni at slip.

Left-arm spin­ner Guadakesh Motie got Chamu Chib­hab­ha to nick a back foot dri­ve to the ’keep­er for nine be­fore Brath­waite struck with the penul­ti­mate de­liv­ery of the day in his first over of off-spin, com­pre­hen­sive­ly bowl­ing his op­po­site num­ber Craig Ervine for 13.

CMC

Scores:

WEST IN­DIES 447 for six de­cl. (Tage­nar­ine Chan­der­paul 207 not out, Kraigg Brath­waite 182, Kyle May­ers 20; Bran­don Mavu­ta 5-140)

ZIM­BAB­WE 114 for three (In­no­cent Ka­ia 59 not out, Tanunur­wa Makoni 33)


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