With patience and old-school grit, Tagenarine Chanderpaul readies for India Test grind

Tagenarine Chanderpaul's square-on stance, crouch at the crease, trigger movement, and his propensity to often mark his guard with the bail all indicate that he is cut from the same cloth as his father, Shivnarine Chanderpaul. And much like Shiv, Tagenarine can soak up balls and wear bowling attacks down.

Since his debut in December 2022, Tagenarine has faced 1433 balls, scoring 560 runs in 19 innings at an average of 35. Among West Indies batters, only Kraigg Brathwaite has faced more balls (2376) albeit in twice as many innings (39) during this period. After West Indies dropped Brathwaite for the upcoming two-match Test series in India, Daren Sammy expects Chanderpaul to step into Brathwaite's shoes. Following West Indies' first training session in Ahmedabad, Sammy even likened Chanderpaul's ability to get stuck in to his father's and Rahul Dravid's.

Chanderpaul is coming off a stint with his father, but in T20 cricket in the USA, where Shiv was the coach of Orlando Galaxy in Minor League Cricket and Tagenarine was captain of the team. He's cagey when asked about Shiv's impact on his batting, but he hopes that their training sessions will help him acclimatise to the conditions in India.

"About the [Indian] conditions, it's a bit similar to some pitches back home," he says. "But just trying and getting some training sessions in and trying to adapt as much as possible…

"Some of the areas where I played in the US are a bit cooler, but some places are hot as well. Especially in Florida, it could get hot sometimes. It's just about getting your rest in the evening. Try to get as much sleep and rest and get accustomed to that time change. It's a different quality of bowling [in India]. For sure, you need to stay sharp and make the most out of the practice sessions to get ready for the game."

Having shaken off the jet lag, Chanderpaul is ready for the red-ball grind and is hopeful of fulfilling coach Sammy's expectations on his first tour of India.

"I'm not much of a flashy player," Chanderpaul says. "So I just try to take my time and accumulate my runs with the odd boundary here and there. I think [batting time] goes with my [natural] game. But I also spend time batting balls at the nets and hope to replicate it [in a match]."

His old-school batting owes also to his training sessions with his paternal grandfather and first coach, Khemraj, who too put Shiv through his paces when he was growing up in the village of Unity in Guyana.

"Yeah, well, obviously when I was little, my dad would be on tour playing and then he lived in the US too. I grew up in Guyana," Chanderpaul says. "In the afternoon after school, my granddad would throw balls at me when I was small. And then as I got bigger, he'd take me to the cricket club after school. So, yeah, I grew up practising with my granddad ever since.

"I don't think I was trained on the same cement strip that my father trained on (laughs) but granddad would always throw balls at me and he always wanted to hit the ball [along] the ground. So I guess that sort of shaped me into the player I'm today."

During his short career Chanderpaul has also had the opportunity to work with Brian Lara after receiving his maiden Test cap from him in Australia in 2022. Under Lara's mentorship in 2023, in his third Test, Chanderpaul scored his maiden double-century, against Zimbabwe in Bulawayo.

"He always tries and gives you ideas about bowlers you can score off and who you need to be defensive against and that sort of stuff," Chanderpaul says of Lara. "So, [the conversations with him were] about picking your match-ups."

India, though, will not offer West Indies much breathing room. In the two Tests that Chanderpaul played against India in the Caribbean in 2023, he fell three times to the spin of R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja. Ashwin's dismissal of Chanderpaul in the first Test, in Roseau, was a flashback to his magic ball to Alastair Cook in the Edgbaston Test of 2018. While Ashwin has retired, Jadeja, Washington Sundar, Kuldeep Yadav and Axar Patel will pose a threat to Chanderpaul's defensive technique in the Test series.

"India has a great bowling line-up," he says. "So you can't take them for granted. You've got to go out there and give them the respect and try and score when you can. In the first Test [in Roseau], I didn't get too many runs. [In the] second Test, I batted some balls. Kind of threw it away in the first innings. But playing Ashwin and Jadeja… I can take some confidence from the second Test and do the right things going into this Test series."

Chanderpaul also had encouraging numbers on his first and only first-class tour of the subcontinent so far: in 2023 he scored 275 runs in five innings for West Indies A against Bangladesh A in Sylhet, including three half-centuries. Only Joshua Da Silva made more runs (300) than him during that unofficial three-match Test series in Bangladesh. "I had runs against two left-arm spinners and a few offspinners as well," Chanderpaul says. "It was a fairly good tour for me. I had a few [good] scores. Hopefully I can try and get some runs in the series ahead."

What cues does he look for while facing spin? "You've got to try and pick the ball up from the hand, of course," he says. "Then see what type of delivery and, yeah, where it fits and that sort of stuff. So you know, just try and get in the right positions early and see where you can turn it over and get off strike or pick up a boundary. I have the sweep but you've got to play what you see on the day."

It can be fiendishly difficult to pick left-arm wristspinner Kuldeep out of his hand, and Washington, who is now India's frontline offspinner after Ashwin's departure, can threaten both edges with turn and drift. West Indies' presence in future World Test Championships (WTC) is looking uncertain, but there's a sliver of hope that Chanderpaul's staying power can make India's attack dig deep and carry West Indies' batting, like his father did back in the day.

Despite the stint in Minor League T20s in the USA, Chanderpaul is yet to play top-flight T20 cricket, like his predecessor Brathwaite. Is featuring in the CPL somewhere in the back of his mind?

"Who knows?" he laughs. "You've got to deal with what's ahead of you right now." And right now, that's his first Test series in India.