In 2012, we wrote a piece for Cricinfo about Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s patient wait for a West Indies Test team worthy of his contributions. Little did we know he wasn’t just waiting; he was taking active steps.

‘Taking active steps’ is an interesting euphemism because what we’re saying is that Shiv’s son Tagenarine is a really good player. About a year after we wrote that piece, we learned of his existence and (this website being what it is) immediately delighted in his magnificent name.

Tagenarine Chanderpaul opens the batting for the Windies these days and that seems significant.

The unbeaten

Shiv was a batter who did not much enjoy being dismissed and rather went out of his way to avoid experiencing that thing.

In 2002, he went 1,051 balls and 1,523 minutes without being dismissed. Just to contextualise that feat, it’s almost a full day of Test cricket longer than the next best effort, Jacques Kallis’s 1,241 minutes.

Nor was it the only time he batted for absolutely bloody ages without anyone getting him out. Shiv is responsible for no fewer than four of the 10 longest unbeaten streaks. That gives him a pretty strong claim to being cricket’s most immovable batter.

That’s how you get named not just Lord Megachief of Gold, but Grand Lord Megachief of Gold, people. That’s how you get Cricinfo articles written by us when you pass 10,000 runs. That’s how you get called the last great West Indies cricketer upon your retirement. (Last of one era, at any rate.)

The similarly unbeaten

If Tagenarine has inherited even half of his father’s aversion to getting out, the West Indies have a handy cricketer on their hands – and one who may prove useful in a way Shivnarine never really was.

Because if there was one thing that characterised Shiv’s output, it was halting – or at least significantly slowing – batting collapses. Time and again, he’d walk in at 26-3 and finish with 72 not out off 200 balls. Shivnarine Chanderpaul entered disaster zones and mitigated the situation.

Tagenarine Chanderpaul does not enter disaster zones. Tagenarine is an opener. If Tagenarine bats and bats and doesn’t get out, he greatly reduces the chances of a disaster zone materialising in the first place.

Why not go and read The Cult of Digging In, our feature about the psychology of rearguard batting next? What else are you going to do? Your job?

< 1 minute readDavid Warner said that back in 2012, he saw Shivnarine Chanderpaul put in a six-hour shift against the bowling machine.

“I said ‘This is ridiculous, how can you do this?’ and he said: ‘If you’re going to bat for six hours in a game you might as well practise it.’”

Shivnarine Chanderpaul.

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The world’s coaching manuals can breathe a sigh of relief because the greatest dissident of modern times has officially called it a day. No-one who remains will question them quite so persuasively. Cricket’s lost a lot.

The start and end

When Shivnarine Chanderpaul made his Test debut, he did so in a team containing Desmond Haynes, Richie Richardson, Brian Lara, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh. When he played his final Test, he came in after Marlon Samuels, a man who continues to be selected despite averaging just 33.

We’ve worked in a company like that. At the start, it was a vibrant place full of expertise. By the end, a guy who was found to have sold company data was retained because he cried when he was caught and seemed like he was sorry about it. The IT manager discovered a dead bird in the server and thought the best way of disposing of it would be to try and flush it down the toilet. The company was dying and these were by no means the least-qualified people remaining. The guy who spent the morning reclining on his office chair with his foot in the bin almost certainly was.

Imagine finding yourself in that situation. Imagine the impact on your motivation and professionalism of being surrounded by a confederacy of dunces. Do something well and most wouldn’t even be qualified to recognise it. We get a sense that was the world in which Shivnarine Chanderpaul eventually found himself. But yet where most of us would rush to the exit, Shiv ploughed on – the last great West Indies cricketer.

The last?

Hopefully that won’t prove to be the case, hopefully there will be a resurgence, but it seems unlikely at present. At best, Shiv’s retirement snaps the last thin thread to what is now undeniably a previous era.

Excuse us if we resort to a series of links to mark his departure, but we’ve already invested a lot of time in writing about him. Even if he himself rarely got any kind of payback for the long hours he invested at the crease, we’re not keen to pay tribute by doing likewise.

He deserves better than the written equivalent of a frenzied T20 knock, so here are some of our long form innings about him.

The man who wrote his own textbook in illegible handwriting

Rickets, Chomsky, Shane Watson talking bollocks and the art of persisting for long enough that eventually the world changes shape to accommodate you. Shiv was our final King of Cricket for All Out Cricket.

The eternal watchfulness of Chanderpaul

A tribute in the wake of his 10,000th Test run, written for Cricinfo. It’s basically just 11 different ways of describing that magnificent technique of his. Also includes a Sopranos quote.

Lord Megachief of Gold 2007

The highest honour in international cricket.

Grand Lord Megachief of Gold 2008

The only man to win the highest honour in cricket two years in a row.

How to mark this occasion

How should we should pay tribute to this most magnificent of cricketers? Perhaps we should adopt one aspect of his technique and employ it in our daily life. Today, in honour of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, try and do something – anything – unexpected with your elbows. Let us know how you get on.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul.

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Hurray! Friday! Let’s celebrate by writing about melancholy exits!

We’ve sadly had two recently. Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s international career ended just as he imagined it would when he first took up the sport as a boy, with a WhatsApp exchange between Test series. Meanwhile, Craig Kieswetter has had to call it a day at the age of 27 because of the hideous eye injury he sustained last year.

Chanderpaul did at least make it to the age of 40 as an international cricketer and with 164 Tests to his name, few can boast a longer career . He also finishes with an average of 51, so few can boast a better career either. Even so, no-one dreams of a poignant final moment in which all they’re doing is fuming at a message on their phone.

Was it the right time for him to go? He didn’t want to, but it’s a lot easier to make the decision to continue when you’re the player. You don’t really have other options, whereas the selectors do. For the West Indies, life goes on. For Chanderpaul, in a certain maudlin sense, it doesn’t.

It’s unclear from Kieswetter’s statement whether the issue is the injury itself or his reaction to it. “I feel mentally I will never again be the player that I was,” perhaps hints that it’s the latter.

And who can blame him? Having your eye socket fractured and your vision knackered is going to leave a perfectly understandable psychological mark, even if you get over the physical effects. This is why we should never be too angry at batsmen who back away from short-pitched bowling. They’re the logical ones. It’s the ones who get in line who have the wonky thinking.

Kieswetter’s career high point was being named man of the match when England won the World T20 in 2010. That bigstagegoodknockability was never really on display again and it’s bleak to think that reports such as this one reduce the whole course of his life up until now to those 49 balls.

Somerset play Hampshire tonight and the West Indies continue their Test against Australia. Hopefully both players will join the rest of us by having a beer and enjoying the spectacle. After all, it really ain’t so bad this side of the boundary ropes.

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Our final King of Cricket appeared on the All Out Cricket website a couple of weeks ago. We didn’t link to it at the time because we thought it would get lost amid all the World Cup stuff. We didn’t want that to happen because it’s Shiv and you all know how we feel about Shiv.

Rickets, Chomsky, Shane Watson talking bollocks and the art of persisting for long enough that eventually the world changes shape to accommodate you. It’s all in there.

< 1 minute readRahul Bhattacharya’s piece about Shivnarine Chanderpaul in the November issue of The Cricket Monthly is full of highlights, not least because a man who is himself one of our favourite cricketers also seems to revere exactly the same players we do.

He describes how Brian Lara would sometimes put spin on the ball with his shots to evade fielders and then at other times wouldn’t, depending on where they were positioned.

There’s also a fantasic quote about the challenge of facing Wasim Akram:

“After looking for swing-swing-swing all of a sudden I saw a ball on my face.”

However, our favourite moment is the way he tells another Wasim Akram story and more specifically how he punctuates it.

“Wasim bowl a few that went across him. Hooper normally play bat-and-pad, but he left a little gap just enough for the ball to pass through. Wasim had a look at him. Then Wasim had one go back through that little gap and hit them stumps. That is how good this guy is. Wasim is an unbelievable bowler. Wasim Akram.”

That’s how you end a cricket anecdote. You say the name of the player as if you’re ending a prayer.

That Shivnarine Chanderpaul, he’s one hell of a guy. Shivnarine Chanderpaul.

< 1 minute readNormally, when someone talks about ‘the next so-and-so’ it’s a load of old cobblers, but there really is another Chanderpaul – it’s Shiv’s son.

Even better, he’s almost, but not quite, named after a fruit. Tagenarine Chanderpaul is set to make his first-class debut in February, even though he’s only 16.

We didn’t think it was possible to improve on Shivnarine Chanderpaul in any way whatsoever, but if we could have the exact same person and he was also called Tagenarine, that would unarguably be better. Fingers crossed Tagenarine can tick the ‘genius of a batsman despite having a surfeit of elbows’ box. If he can, life just improved. For once.

No word yet on his younger brothers, Netecterine, Calementine and Mandarine.

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For all that cricket is a team game, West Indies are only one Shiv away from being literally unbeatable. England basically took wickets at one end only throughout this match and Marlon Samuels gave an indication what would happen were a second Shivnarine Chanderpaul to come to the crease.

In that situation, West Indies would always have something to bowl at (eventually) and their bowling really isn’t that bad. There’s actually a case for saying they’d have this match firmly under control if they’d won the toss.

However, they didn’t win the toss and so they find themselves defending 191. We think they should have played a spinner. Particularly against England. You should always play a spinner. Particularly against England.

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Shiv has just hit his 10,000th run and Cricinfo wanted someone to pay tribute to him. Being as we named him not just Lord Megachief of Gold, but Grand Lord Megachief of Gold, we were well-placed to pass comment.

For some reason, our idea of a tribute is to describe his ugly batting in about 11 different ways.

There were actually a few things we didn’t get round to mentioning in that column (we could probably write about 30,000 words on the subject of Shivnarine Chanderpaul so we weren’t struggling to meet the word count). One was that despite losing almost every match, he still ploughs on, maintaining the same high standards.

That particular feat of endurance is perhaps more remarkable than any individual innings. Most people would have long ago grown despairing and careless in the face of what he has endured as a sportsman, yet he is willing to spend long, long hours at the crease for no real reward. It’s quite astonishing really.

Anyway, here’s our Cricinfo tribute to Shiv.

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Australia celebrated when they dismissed the West Indies’ Kraigg Brathwaite for 57 off 199 balls. As an achievement, it was like flouncing over a stile before tackling the mountain. Shivnarine Chanderpaul promptly walked to the crease and only departed when Darren Sammy declared.

Shiv simply cannot be bothered being dismissed. He’s heard that it happens, but can’t see the point. What else would he do? Watch TV? Read the paper? He prefers batting.

Shane Watson says Australia are going to have to find a way of making Shiv take risks. Good luck in your quest, Shane. Maybe once you’ve succeeded you can start deflecting asteroids away from the Earth using only the power of your mind.