Shivnarine Chanderpaul battles in vain

Shivnarine Chanderpaul is probably the most horrendous looking batsman around. We mean in terms of his batting style, of course. We're not passing judgement on his looks. He looks fine. He's not really our type, but... Er, the batting anyway.

We're not actually sure if Shiv HAS a stance at the crease. At least not one that he uses repeatedly. He stands there and he's got a bat, but it's not what you'd call a 'stance'. As far as his technique goes, he tends to face the bowler and unfurl a visual catastophe of limbs when the ball arrives.

In Test cricket, opening batsmen tend to be the ones with the best techniques. In one-day cricket, they're either Test openers or big-hitters. We're not quite sure why Chanderpaul got his chance at the top of the West Indian one-day order, because he's neither of these things. Or at least he wasn't.

In Test cricket, Chanderpaul sort of spoons the ball around at weird angles and spends an age at the crease. He's good, in that he's effective, but he doesn't look good and he doesn't score quickly. For some reason he's been given this chance as one of the West Indies' one-day openers and punch our teeth out and steal our wallet, but he's really pretty damn good at it.

Maybe his effectiveness is why he got the chance. He's an effective yet hideous Test batsman and equally he's an effective yet hideous one-day opener. Suddenly he's smashing the ball to all parts and he and Chris Gayle are really something to be feared.

Today he hit 149 not out off 137 balls against India. West Indies lost, but you can't really blame Shiv, can you?

Marcus Trescothick - an aggressive, left-handed one-day opener

All the best teams in this World Cup have got at least one aggressive, left-handed opener - a bullying one, even.

The West Indies have got Chris Gayle; South Africa have got Graeme Smith; Sri Lanka have got Sanath Jayasuriya; New Zealand have got Stephen Fleming; and Australia have got Adam Gilchrist and Adam Gilchrist alone - no other aggressive, left-handed opener of note at all. Not one. Just Adam Gilchrist.

Sri Lanka have even got a spare. Upul Tharanga's remarkably aggressive. You just don't notice sometimes because Benevolent Uncle Sanath's batting has gone up to 11.

England have got a left-hander, Ed Joyce, but he's not really aggressive. We believe that the correct term for him is 'an accumulator'. The other two batsmen in England's top three, Ian Bell and Michael Vaughan, are also accumulators, although all they've really accumulated so far is a length list of poor scores.

The problem is that these three are each piling the pressure on each other with their 'steady' scoring rates. Replace one of those three with a left-handed aggressor - we don't know why they have to be left-handed, but they really do - and the pressure is lifted from the two survivors, who can then play their dull, natural games with the spotlight elsewhere.

What England really need is a Marcus Trescothick-esque batsman, such as Marcus Trescothick. Ideally, this batsman will also have Marcus Trescothick-esque levels of experience. He'll have hit a Marcus Trescothick-esque number of one-day international hundreds - about 12. He'll have a Marcus Trescothick-esque strike-rate too - about 85.21 or thereabouts.

Unfortunately, the only name that comes to mind is that of Andrew Strauss and we're not really feeling Andrew Strauss of late.

Gosh darn it, Marcus. We want you back, you big red-cheeked, cider-swilling beeftain. 'Beeftain' is a word we've invented specifically for this occasion. It means a burly, authoritative player. It's a blend of 'beefy' and 'chieftain' as you've probably guessed.

Words we've invented:
Beeftain
Innocuoso

An 'innocuoso' is one who excels at the art of harmlessness.