Vin­ode Mam­chan

Coach of the West In­dies crick­et team Phil Sim­mons met with strug­gling West In­dies bats­man Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul for a lengthy pe­ri­od on Mon­day in Bar­ba­dos, as they dis­cussed his fu­ture with the re­gion­al side.

The 40-year-old Chan­der­paul who is near­ing Bri­an Lara's mark for the most Test runs by a West In­di­an, had a mis­er­able tour against Eng­land, where he tal­lied just 92 runs at a low­ly av­er­age of 15.33 from six in­nings.

The West In­dies went on to win the Test match by five wick­ets and square the se­ries but there has been calls from some quar­ters for Chan­der­paul to leave be­fore he is pushed out.

T&T Guardian un­der­stands that coach Sim­mons did the re­spon­si­ble thing and called Chan­der­paul for a meet­ing which from all re­ports went very well. It is un­clear what was the de­ci­sion at the end of the meet­ing, whether Chan­der­paul will call it a day or con­tin­ue on for the tough se­ries against Aus­tralia.

What is keep­ing his in­ter­est in the game is the fact that in his 20th year of Test crick­et, he is steadi­ly clos­ing in on Bri­an Lara's record as the most pro­lif­ic West In­dies bats­man. Lara, who played in 131 Test match­es be­tween 1990 and 2006 in his il­lus­tri­ous ca­reer, amassed 11,953 runs at an av­er­age 52.88.

He scored 34 cen­turies and 48 half-cen­turies dur­ing a ca­reer in which he twice set the world record for high­est in­di­vid­ual score in a Test in­ning–375 and 400 re­spec­tive­ly. Chan­der­paul now stands 11,867 runs from 164 match­es at an av­er­age of 51.37 with 30 cen­turies and 66 half cen­turies. He's 86 runs shy of tak­ing over Lara's record.

It is un­der­stood that the views of the West In­dies se­lec­tion pan­el is that it is up to Sim­mons to make a call on Chan­der­paul and the Ari­ma man de­cid­ed to give the Guyanese his say in the mat­ter be­cause he has been a great ser­vant of West In­dies crick­et.

For­mer Test play­er Phi­lo Wal­lace re­cent­ly made his views clear on Chan­der­paul say­ing that he should be giv­en the five home Tests (three against Eng­land and two against Aus­tralia) and then prop­er­ly ho­n­oured by the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) for his ser­vices to the re­gion­al team.