Storyline: Shivnarine Chanderpaul is former captain of the West Indies cricket team. In January he announced his retirement from international competition after twenty years of glorious play.
Late last year, when Tim Peake and his colleagues entered the celestial space a few miles above our planet, little did I, nor for that sake, had anyone thought what wondrous pictures they would share with us from the above. They left the world, if only for a short period of time, halting the hearing of their thunder. For a student and a scholar of science, stationed in an unvisited square room fleeing away from many a merry, Tim’s achievement meant everything. It was as if a lightening had struck in the darkest corners that ever needed attention.
If you, dear reader are an athlete, you may draw the meaning of these lines towards writing a thesis on track and field. Long jump? High jump? If you, like me, are an athlete who doesn’t need shoes, a swimmer, you might consider the above jumps, albeit in a different avatar. Butter Fly? Or even the flight in entering the waters, if only for a good swim?
Courtesy: telegraph.co.uk
Well, readers and writers, my protagonist in this wee bit of column belongs to a game, cricket. Most famously reminisced for a batting stance only he can master and only he can give it a doctorate, Shivnarine Chanderpaul has raised from many a slumber. His life and care in a thesis of exalted importance. To me as an individual, Shiv is a monk who meditated on many a field. My earliest memories of watching him play dates back to 2002. Indian team was touring the Caribbean. Chanderpaul and his partner in crime, Lara was on their finest swing. Both southpaws, in their personal lives, have scored more than 11,000 international runs and both will stand in a list, if ever made, of the greatest batsmen to have ever played the game.
They say a mind singularly practical and sagacious can unease many a shallow doubt and treat time’s disguise to indefatigable afterthoughts–if only to be given an unbiased, unabated, undaunted heralding. Shiv’s cricket resonates to the aforementioned lines. He is the most unvisited shores in the sempiternal oceans of the game that’s forever opened to the glaring sky that hardly shun away from us.
Courtesy: bbc.co.uk
Yet there lies one amiable and clinical feature in this Guayaneese superstar. Meekness and humility in playing the ball on its merit, humility in standing stoic amidst many a cacophonous uncertainty and humility too, in watching the ball as closely as possible if only to play to the best of his sporting knack and dexterity and acumen. Period.
History will tell a tale of the immortal equals. A tale that will hardly attract any stones. Thomas Treherne once said, “The corn was omient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor, was ever sown. I thought, it has stood from everlasting to everlasting.” Thomas T has a valid point there.
Across the gulf of years, amid the plethora of the batsman who played the sport, left-handed position is one which attracts many an eye without blinking. I have been really fascinated at the mention of corn here. Shiv’s is a rare seed that has sown in the field of play that has heaped and many reaped many a noble thing. As my fellow columnists, professionally statisticians would say Shiv’s numbers in the game stretch beyond the counting. He and his fellow south paw, Lara, can bore and bone and burden the bowlers to knackering death by their presence on the field, unbeaten, unharmed.
Edmond Rostard once said, “A great noise indicates a great man. Genial, Courteous, intellectual, visible and courageous.” Shiv’s bat made a noise rich in talent and unbridled harmony. Noise and sound in raising a voice to watch the ball, till it left the willow after making a contact.
Shakespeare, one of the finest, and an immortal representation of the mighty pen in human flesh and blood, once said, “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Chanderpaul too, in my opinion, is an antonym to cricket’s inexplicable and uselessly cruel caprice of fate.
William S Landor once wrote these enthralling lines:
There is a flower I wish to wear,
But not until first worn by you-
Heart’s ease-of all earth’s flowers most rare;
Bring it; and bring enough for two.
In my opinion, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, one of my childhood heroes and one of the pantheons of the game, is a harvest to push and gush life’s barren regrets into oblivion.
Respects!!!!
