Chanders: WI decline ‘ongoing for a while now’ Shivnarine

Speaking to Cricbuzz, he said, “it’s been ongoing for a while now...

ever since we got rid of all our senior players.

We threw them out all at once. In a team when you don’t have senior players and your younger players have to come and fight, there’s a problem. They’re new and they wouldn’t have learned anything.

“When I came in, I had all of them (seniors) around, so I learnt fast.

I’m a person who will sit, listen, learn from other people and watch what they’re doing; I try and learn as much as I can as quickly as possible because in this day and age you have to learn as quickly as possible. It’s not just about watching cricket - it’s about watching and learning. A lot of young fellows these days watch cricket, but they don’t watch to learn,” he stated as he touched on the passing of the guard.

He declared West Indies cricket as “distracting” as he also revealed details on the problems he faced with selecting his team as skipper in his brief tenure in 2004.

On selecting his own players, he said, “sometimes I did and sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes the selectors pick a team and you just go with that. Sometimes the captains don’t really have a say...you can request but it isn’t necessary that you get what you want.” He added that he also found cooperation hard to come by.

“It was pretty tough and wasn’t easy, especially when you had people around you who were making your job hell. After a while you start thinking, ‘How am I going to deal with these guys?’ For instance, one time I set them at backward point and after two balls, they’re at point, and the ball has gone to backward point for four! And I’m like, ‘Wait, but I didn’t set you there, how did you reach there?!’ They would keep moving to different positions. It was a waste of time, so I gave it up. I didn’t want the stress of that because that was not helping me and I couldn’t even focus on my own cricket,” continued the 42 year-old.

Chanderpaul cracked 11,867 runs in 164 Tests at an average of over 51 with 8,778 runs scored in One-Days at 41.60.

His last ODI came in the 2011 World Cup with West Indies exiting in the quarters. He ended with an average of 38 but revealed that then-coach, Ottis Gibson, earmarked him for omission.

“The World Cup that was played in Sri Lanka and India was my last.

I didn’t play anymore ODIs after that. I was close to 1,000 runs that year and I’d been told they’re not going to pick me anymore, so there was nothing I could do.

The point was raised whenever there was a meeting was called. (Ottis) Gibson, the coach at that time, said that, ‘Oh, you didn’t score any runs in the last 12 months’. I said, ‘but in the last 12 months I’ve been ranked among the top 10 batsmen in the world, there must’ve been doing something’.

Then he said, ‘In the last couple of tours you haven’t done anything’. So I said, ‘The last couple of tours I’ve been batting 5,6,7,8,9, I’m the most senior batsman in the team and I don’t even know where I’m batting.

And to come out of those tours with an average of 39, I don’t think I’ve done that bad’.

“Then I realised it was a waste of time. It wasn’t getting anywhere and I wouldn’t win, so I decided to stay quiet and let them do what they have to do,” explained Chandperpaul.

He retired 86 runs short of Brian Lara’s record as West Indies’ leading Test scorer with the WICB seemingly pressuring him under the auspices of poor form. Chanderpaul eventually landed at the Masters Champions League and he added, “There was no more cricket left for me to play as I wasn’t selected to play for the West Indies, so I opted to play for the MCL after I got this contract here.

I got an NOC from the WICB which also said that I had to retire on the 23rd January, and that it had a restriction in it or else they’d take it back. I retired the day before I finished a regional tournament.” On the issue of the region’s perceived best talent not being picked for international duty, he concluded, “I don’t know what’s going on.

I’ve not been there for a while so I don’t know what’s happening. We have new people in charge, new selecting teams who take whoever they want, so there’s nothing I can do about it.”