Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

This will be in points. I don’t have the emotional stamina to write in any other way.  Moreover, I am terribly lazy.

1)Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew is a book you will be told you must love. As I was. I picked it up because I had heard wonderful reviews by the handful of people who’ve read it; not discounting his publisher referring to him as –something to the effect of—her superstar this year. Choosing to invest in a 400 page hardcover about Sri Lankan Cricket seems like a good decision when you discover on the last day of the Jaipur Literature Festival that its author Shehan Karunatilaka is a refreshingly witty and insightful speaker.

2)Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew is a book you will love. Because echoes of glowing reccos don’t last until page 40; when you are left wondering Mohinder Binny is which of the two; when you can nearly smell the alcohol that aided W.G Karunasena, the eccentric, Ceylon Sportswriter of Year winning journalist narrator’s writing.

3)I know very little about the technicalities of Cricket. I have on numerous occasions confused leg-spin and off-spin bowling. I don’t know if Murali chucks(W.G says he doesn’t. I like him enough to take his word for it). Chinaman is the story of W.G Karunasena’s search for Pradeep Sivanathan Mathew, an ambidextrous spinner whose varied arsenal of deliveries includes the double-bounce ball, seen until now in slapstick ads that rode on ridiculously funny tropes that were recycled each World Cup. Pradeep Mathew whose existence few acknowledge and fewer still have anything good to say about is the enduring mystery of this epic novel. Surrounding Wije/Gamini/Karunasena are best friend Ari Byrd(a Bogart impersonating, bumbling character I absolutely loved), wife Sheila, errant son Garfield, revered ex-Cricketer Graham Snow, an assortment of Sri Lankan bombshells, thinly disguised superstar cricketers and shady Lankan Cricket Board officials. Then there are the allusions to the war. To the Sinhalese vis-à-vis the Tamils; the expatriate friend Jonny from the British High Commission with a foggy past and Premier league disappointments. To call it a Cricket novel, thus, is a little like calling the IPL a cricketing tournament.

4)Pompous cricketers, women with suspended morals and an intriguing mystery. I could only think of Fake IPL Player, having run away from any books that chronicled sport; or anybody’s love for it. Forgive me. Chinaman is far more sophisticated in its writing and layered in its telling. Not to mention literary. Not comparable to the rambling fascinations of an eventual sell out. What shines through in this complex first person narrative of stubbing out the story of possibly the greatest bowler of all time is the maniacal fixation that a sport can bind any willing patron in. I have known sport-fanatics. I secretly envy them.

The excerpt below testifies to the mania and loving that resulted in this novel. It is a moving description of the protagonist’s relationship to sport. It is slightly unfair to post this bit as representative of the book because it misses out on the strong, original humor and suspense that really are the central features of Chinaman. But then this chapter felt so right and does appropriate justice to the depth of Karunatilaka’s writing. 

My wife asks me why I love sport more than her. More than I do my son and our life together. I tell her then that she is talking nonsense. But perhaps she isn’t.

Some people gaze at setting suns, sitting mountains, teenage virgins and their wiggling thighs. I see beauty in free kicks, late cuts, slam dunks, tries from halfway and balls that turn from off to leg.

When the English toured in 1993, their supporters arrived in droves and formed a jolly beer-swilling troupe called the Barmy Army. A T-shirt of theirs read as follows: ‘One day you will meet a goal that you’ll want to marry and have kids with.

Anyone who saw Diego Maradona in 1986 will agree that the T-shirt speaks the truth. To be in the right place at the right time and to watch a gifted athlete in full cry is one of life’s true pleasures.

In sport, has-beens can step onto a plate and smash a last ball into oblivion. A village can travel to Manchester for a cup tie and topple a giant. Villains, can heroes become.

In 1996, sub-continental flair overcame western precision and the world’s nobodies thrashed the world’s bullies. Sixty years earlier a black man ridiculed the Nazi race theory with five gold medals in Berlin before Mein Fuhrer’s furious eyes.

In real life, justice is rarely poetic and too often invisible. Good sits in a corner, collects a cheque and pays a mortgage. Evil builds empires.

Sport gives us organisms that attack in formation. Like India’s spin quartet and the three Ws from the Caribbean. Teams that become superhuman before your very eyes. Like Dalglish’s Liverpool, Fitzpatrick’s All Blacks and Ranatunga’s Lankans.

In real life, if you find yourself chasing 30 runs off 20 balls, you will fall short, even with all your wickets in hand. Real life is lived at 2 runs an over, with a dodgy LBW every decade.

In real life, as Sri Lankan cricket grows sweeter, your wife will grow sourer. The All Blacks may underachieve for two more decades but your son will disappoint you more. I hope you read this Garfield, I hope you forgive.

The answer to my wife’s question is of course a no. I would go down in a hail of bullets for her and for Garfield many times over. And while Aravinda de Silva has delighted me on many an occasion, I wouldn’t even take a blister for him.

But the truth, Sheila, is bigger than both of us, whether it be written on the subway walls or on the belly of a lager lout’s T-shirt. In thirty years, the world will not care about how I lived. But in hundred years, Bulgarians will still talk of Letchkov and how he expelled the mighty Germans from the 1994 World Cup with a simple header.

Sport can unite worlds, tear down walls, and transcend race, the past, and all probability. Unlike life, sport matters.

5) Yesterday I retweeted a quote by Tom Wolfe. He says ‘The problem with fiction is, it has to be plausible. That’s not true with non-fiction.’ Which Karunatilaka makes sound like rubbish.  Because with W.G, he has crafted such a genuinely acerbic, profound voice and with such ease that it is hard to believe this book rests in shelves marked Fiction and not memoir.

I can’t resist quoting Woody Allen here:

"I jokingly suggest thou sacrifice Isaac and thou immediately runs out to do it."
And Abraham fell to his knees, "See, I never know when you're kidding."
And the Lord thundered, "No sense of humor. I can't believe it."
"But doth this not prove I love thee, that I was willing to donate mine only son on thy whim?"
And the Lord said, "It proves that some men will follow any order no matter how asinine as long as it comes from a resonant, well-modulated voice."

Chuckle. But no really. Oh the voice. The voice of W.G! Everybody who has been young and fancies him/herself as a bit of a cynic will have dreamed of writing some major work in a tone such as W.Gs. Karunatilaka has fulfilled his.

On an aside, talking about non-plausible non-fiction, I must also mention Sonia Faleiro’s Beautiful Thing. By putting her book in the same sentence as the phrase, I don’t mean to say her work on bargirls in Mumbai is implausible. It was just so poetic and surreal at times that it didn’t seem at all like her protagonist Leela was one woman. Or that all those horrifying realities of her life were true. Not to mean her book was not entertaining or moving.

6)Like any balanced reviewer (hahah) I must stop gushing. It isn’t like there weren’t times when I felt that the book was longer than necessary. Too much of a good thing. I can’t lecture on form and structure, but this book is entirely in the format of short entries in a slightly disorganized manuscript. The underlying scheme of the book is to sometimes deliver unforeseen bouncers ( while writing about a book about a spinner. I really need to brush up on my Cricket) and then calmly go off on an aside while you’re left wondering what just happened, mouth agape. This is perhaps the coolest thing about the book. Once you get used to it, that is.

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Sidin Vadukut review that sort of started it all, here: http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/481225.html

Random House excerpt from the novel here: http://randomhouseindia.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/shehan-karunatilaka-chinaman/

The awesomeawesome Jai Arjun Singh's review here: http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/2011/02/absent-spinner-cricket-and-life-in.html

Shehan Karunatilaka speaks to Rajdeep Sardesai. Nick Hornby mention #win: http://www.hindustantimes.com/Spin-on-a-yarn/Article1-661320.aspx

He talks to Supriya Nair here: http://www.livemint.com/2011/02/04185432/A-rare-type-bowling.html?h=B


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EDIT: The passage I painstakingly typed there from the book is what Shehan Karunatilaka's website has in the excerpt section, I discover now (albeit an extended version which seems to have been edited in the latest version). Hours after. Haha. I feel vindicated. </endof goofy remarks>