Jamaica [West Indies], Aug.31 : Former West Indies batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul has continued to protest his premature axing from the national squad, insisting that he has given his yeoman service to the country but was not honoured in return.
"A lot of times I went back home to Guyana injured from tours that I've been on for West Indies and go back home and play, and you give so much service for your country and to West Indies and on the back end you were not properly honoured for it," Chanderpaul was quoted as saying by Jamaica Observer.
Last year, Chanderpaul was dropped for the home Test series against Australia after his poor run of form that saw mere 183 runs at an average of 16.63 in the 11 innings that followed his 30th and final Test century against Bangladesh in September.
Six months later Chanderpaul made his formal retirement announcement and the Guyanese middle-order batsman believes his departure was not treated properly.
"I ended up getting the same treatment in the back end of it, where you are totally disrespected and you were not treated right, and you've given so many years of service to the Caribbean," he complained," said Chanderpaul, whose last appearance came against England in May last year.
While pointing out he received an undignified farewell, the 42-year-old insisted that he was expecting a proper send-off like India's Sachin Tendulkar after doing so much for the West Indies.
"There's nobody there to properly honour you and send you off properly, maybe like what Sachin [Tendulkar] got in India or some of the other players I've seen got a proper send-off.
It was nothing like that. It hurt in the end because you've done so much for the West Indies" Chanderpaul. The former Caribbean batsman, however, admitted that he was not the only one who was not given a respectful farewell.
"This is something that happened way back in the past, when I started my career with some of the senior players, maybe like [Courtney] Walsh and other guys, Desmond Haynes.
These are things that happened to those guys and it was not handled properly," he said. In his illustrious career, Chanderpaul scored a total of 11,867 runs in 164 Test matches. He is short of just 87 runs from surpassing Brian Lara as the leading West Indies run-scorer of all time, which seems to be impossible now.
Source: ANI
