CHANDERPAUL MANCHESTER, England (CMC):
Veteran West Indies batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul has described his unbeaten century against England on a difficult Old Trafford pitch yesterday as his best-ever Test innings.
"Yes it was my best Test innings. It was pretty difficult out there to deal with even the pacers," Chanderpaul said after finishing unbeaten on 116 as West Indies lost the third Test by 60 runs.
"Monty (Panesar) was really difficult to bat. At any time anything could have happened. A ball could have jumped at my glove, a few did and it just happened that they landed in safe areas which I was happy about.
"For the pacers, a few balls were kicking off from a length and a few squatted, it was a pretty tough wicket to bat on and we batted pretty well on it to get to that total."
Herculean innings
Chanderpaul, resuming from 81 overnight, batted resolutely, overall facing 257 balls and striking 12 fours in a shade under seven hours at the crease as the West Indies were dismissed for 394.
It was a Herculean innings, rated by England captain Michael Vaughan as the best he had ever seen in Test cricket under the conditions.
"As a senior player in your team you have to show some sort of responsibility. You have to go out there and try your best. I am trying to do my best as a senior player," Chanderpaul said.
"This morning we were thinking that if we batted the two sessions, until tea we will win the game. We went out after lunch and thought if we bat out the session we will win the game."
Chanderpaul, who shared in two crucial 37-run partnerships with Darren Sammy (25) and Jerome Taylor (11) for the seventh and eighth wickets respectively, said it had been important to rotate the strike with his partners.
"It was one of the plans we had - to keep things rotating. If I took most of the strike and don't score then England will get on top of us so we tried to keep things going along and keep scoreboard ticking," he explained.
He admitted to being disappointed over the Windies loss.
"I was very disappointed, we had done all the hard work and were 60 runs short. If we had won the game, we would have been really happy," Chanderpaul said.
