Veteran West Indies batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul, the seventh highest Test match run maker in history, announced his international retirement, 22 years after his debut.
The 41-year-old former captain from Guyana ends his Test career on 11,867 runs, just 86 short of the West Indies all-time record held by Brian lara.
Chanderpaul, a gritty and stubborn left-hander, made his debut against England in March 1994, in Guyana, hitting a half-century as the West Indies won by an innings and 44 runs.
His final Test was also against England last May in Barbados where the West Indies won by five wickets to level a three-Test series against Alastair Cook’s side.
Chanderpaul’s highest score in his 164 Tests was 203 not out — he achieved that figure twice, against Bangladesh in Mirpur in 2012 and South Africa in Georgetown in 2005 and he finished with an average of 51.37.
Chanderpaul posted a top score of 150 in his 268 ODIs, finishing with an average of 41.60 with his last 50-over match coming in the 2011 World Cup quarter-final loss to Pakistan in Dhaka.
He made 8,778 one-day international runs with 11 centuries. Chanderpaul also played 22 times for the West Indies in the Twenty20 format, but his last outing was in 2010.
Despite his international retirement, Chanderpaul has still been featuring for his regional team. Such was his determined nature at the crease that Australian spin bowling legend Shane Warne once famously described him as “a bloke you needed to crowbar away from crease.”