1. Shivnarine Chanderpaul, West Indies
“You ought to bat straight or people won’t take you seriously.” This proved to be both an advantage and disadvantage for Chanderpaul, as teams took to planning the fall of Brian Lara while Chanderpaul slowly but surely grinded his way to greatness. But it also meant he was often dubbed as ugly, not great, selfish at various points of time. Defying all his critics by batting with a technique not recommended in even the wildest of dreams- Chanderpaul has amassed a gigantic pile of close to 20,000 runs in both forms of the game. Chanderpaul’s has held the batting line-up of west-indies for close to a decade now after the retirement, averaging over 60 in his last five years in test cricket. It is Chanderpaul’s will power and hunger which allows him to maintain such high standards of performance even in his early 40s. The fact that he is the ultimate number one person to not be given his due can be seen in the fact that a player of his stature has been dropped unceremoniously after just 1 bad series. Chanderpaul, therefore,sits on the throne of the most underrated cricketers of the modern era.
