CaribWorldNews, GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Mon. Mar. 23, 2009:  Shivnarine Chanderpaul hit a brilliant century before his adoring fans in Guyana on Sunday as the West Indies beat England by 21 runs to win the 2nd Digicel One-Day International.

A capacity crowd was on hand at the National Stadium at Providence to see the star left-hander hit an unbeaten 112 as the Windies made 264-8 from their 50 overs. The West Indies bowlers later took care of business and the five-match Digicel Series is now level 1-1 with two matches in Barbados and one in St Lucia remaining.

`This was a really special innings for me. What makes it special is that this is my first century on this ground and I was able to perform for the fans. I feel really good that I was able to make a century in front of the people of Guyana and it helped us to win the match,` said the 34-year-old after he was named Player-of-the-Match.

`I was feeling really good at the crease and the crowd helped to urge me on. I started slowly after we lost a few early wickets and I decided I had to dig deep for the team today.`

It was Chanderpaul’s 10th One-Day ton and he put on a crucial 133-run partnership with Ramnaresh Sarwan (74). Chanderpaul hit 10 fours off 134 balls in the innings which took him past 8 000 runs in One-Dayer Internationals.

West Indies captain Chris Gayle said a big `thank you` to the cricket-loving people of Guyana for their huge support.

`I want to commend the guys for the effort they put in today,` Gayle said. `Shiv batted beautifully and Sarwan is in tremendous form. The bowling department gave a tremendous effort again,` Gayle said. `The guys were a bit down from the last game so this is something that lifts our confidence a bit more but we are not over-confident. We have to go out there and take it step by step.`