Chinaman

Excellent. Being a cricket fan I can be highly appreciative of how a lot of the reference to the characters, both the real, fictional and a blend of them made the tale. There is a pivotal event at the 80% mark that had me wondering how the final 20% could be relevant to the story so far told. Relevant? It made the story.
The following is a huge spoiler and I strongly recommend that it not be read by anyone that intends to read this wonderful book.

Spoiler. There is an unpublished manuscript that holds no punches in terms of Sri Lankan Cricket and probably the mass corruption in the country itself. We also get an insight to the civil war and that the game of Cricket also takes on a religious fervour for the vast majority of the population, be they Sri, Tamil or any other of the ethnic divide. The writer of the book (or in my case narrator) is searching for a bowler by the name of Pradeep Mathew who has disappeared and is seemingly deleted from all records. The last 20% of the book covers the attempt to get the book published. After getting agreement, the publishing company wants to edit the book. The point, to me at least, is that the reader (listener in my case), is challenged to decide as to the author's alcoholism and mental health during the first 80% of the book, then consider in the last 20% what was fact or fiction. One example; would the editors take the British consulate employee involved in paedophilia out of the book to make it more palatable, even if he did or did not exist. Why was that person in the book in the first place, his role seemed superfluous. But was it? End Spoiler.


Audio narrator Shivantha Wijesinha is outstanding and this might be the first book audio in that narration added to my overall enjoyment and what has also made this an exceptional experience. I had no idea he was all the parts, Male, Female, accents both Sri Lankan and others. Fantastic.

I might eventually get a physical copy of the book to read along to another listen of the narration. A masterful book and highly recommended.

After several really high recommendations from friends (most of whom, just like I do, have more than a little bit of W.G. in them - a bit sad cricket fanatics who know the bowling average of Fred Spofforth and will tell you why Herath's 5 wickets for 3 runs vs New Zealand is the greatest T20 spell of all time) I finally got hold of this book, and here's my ‘match report'.

Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars

The Good
I love the fact that, when you really get down to it, the protagonist of the story is not actually Pradeep Mathew, but rather, W.G. I think all the cricket tragics like me can relate to him in more than one way; most of us are - deep down inside - a little sad cricket fanatics who fantasize about cricket, we argue about who'll make it into World XIs that will never come to be and get really angry when someone calls Kallis a statswhore or Murali a chucker. That's all of us and that's him. I love the unabashed candid portrayal of him.

It's wonderful that the characters are not black and white, which is very much the case in real life. We have the (supposedly) greatest bowler in Sri Lankan cricket history who is also a match fixer and a terrible team man, two old good hearted cricket lovers who hangout with mass murderers and (alleged) child molesters. I think that is real life - we often like to draw hard lines when it comes to our ideologies but life is often messier than that and lines are blurry.The premise. Sure, it's a leap of faith buying into the fact that Pradeep Mathew is the greatest bowler we ever had, but if you do, almost everything that follows after with regards to him is believable. Especially knowing how Sri Lankan cricket is managed and the people operate, it's not hard to believe someone like him, a potential great, could be sidelined instead of nurtured.The BadThe main cardinal sin in this book, in my opinion, is that the author uses hindsight to drive plot and develop characters. The book was published in 2010 and he has the knowledge of all cricketing events up to that point, and using that to show how geniuses your characters are or drive the plot is a bit lazy writing. The premise. Again, but in the 'bad' column this time. Let's be honest, it's really hard to buy into the premise that Pradeep Mathew is the greatest Sri Lankan bowler of all time based on performances of 4 Tests and few ODIs. Sure, stats isn't everything and if you know your cricket you can tell a lot about a cricketer even before he/she got started. But still, longevity in any sport is a 'must have' factor to definitely say if someone is a true great of the sport. After 18 Tests Mike Hussey averaged 80+, Adam Voges ended his career with a 60+ average, but the former dropped his average to 50 and the latter is not mentioned even in passing when we discuss the greats, becasue they didn't last long enough.In fact, we have a real life example of Mathew in Sri Lankan cricket itself; if you take first year of Ajantha Mendis' international career, you could make a case that he was actually better than the alleged Mathew. Not just in stats mind you, Mendis really did look like the messiah for a while; he flummoxed the Indians - the greatest players of spin - in both Tests and ODIs, and had the world wrapped around his carrom-ball-flicking fingers for a while. And look what happened after that. There are so many similarities between him and Pradeep Mathew I sometimes wonder if he was the inspiration for Pradeep Mathew. The truth is that, especially in Test cricket, having too many tricks up your sleeve is not the secret sauce to success; it's having one good delivery that you can bowl day in and day out with laser-like-precision and throwing in the variations when needed. All great bowlers in the history did that - Warne's most effective delivery was his traditional leg spin, Murali took more wickets with his big turning off-breaks than with anything else, McGrath's most lethal weapon was the just-outside-off slightly swinging good-length ball. The list goes on. Bottom line is, it's hard to believe, and buy into the premise that Mathew was the greatest bowler Sri Lanka had just by his phenominal stats or his outrageous ability. The author hasn't convinced me.Exaggerated genius of Pradeep. According to the book, he pioneered Sri Lankan sledging and convinced Arjuna to take a hardened approach, suggested Sanath his aggressive batting style and suggested the Sanath + Kalu combo, had a hand in Sri Lanka getting Whatmore and Kountouris, predicted Murali's rise and was even (allegedly) the inspiration for Warne to revive leg spin. Someone can be good but not that good. Dial it down a bit.The UglyThe ending. Oh dear, he came so close to ending the book perfectly but couldn't resist (or his publisher actually did push him to change it at the 11th hour as suggested in the book itself). As I mentioned in the beginning, the protagonist is WG, not Pradeep Mathew, and Mathew is used as a vessel to deliver WG to us. It would have been the perfect ending if he ended the book where Garfield finds Mathew, the scene where the door opens and we're left wondering what happened leaving us to use our imagination. The perfect Sopranos ending. Instead, we have a magician revealing his trick right after it was performed. Pity.The AnnoyingEditing. Either he had a bad editor (sorry, whoever you are), or and editor who didn't know much about cricket (or Sri Lanka). Lots of small inconsistencies here and there - after all he got the 1996 World Cup scores wrong (in my edition, it says Australia scored 245 when in fact they scored 241). Also, I understand swapping players' names to protect yourself from litigation, but sometimes he refers to the same player by the made up name and the real name, as two different people. For example, GLOB is clearly Sanath Jayasuriya, but he refers to Sanath separately as well. Many other inconsistencies like that.Language. I understand that it's Sri Lankan English, but the overuse of 'only', 'men', and 'also' is irritating at times. Garfield, who lived most of his life outside of Sri Lanka speaks the same way. In addition to that, I never understood if these characters actually spoke Sri Lankan English or whether author translated Sinhala dialogue into English. Sometimes some of the internal monologue is in broken English as well. It's a bit confusing.Overall, I know that the 'good' section is smaller compared to the rest, but honestly this is not a review meant to say the book was 'bad'. I enjoyed it, the premise (once bought into) is interesting, and execution for the most part is good. It's just that I can get a little carried away when I talk about cricket (and the author would be fully justified in being annoyed at me) but it's intended as constructive criticism. I hope Shehan writes more (especially cricket related) novels and I recommend this book to anyone who's on the fence.Finally, for what it's worth, and to explain why my 3.5 rating still is a good rathing, here's my own rating scheme put in a cricketing context.5 - The Don. Do I even need to explain?4.5 - Malcolm Marshal. He'll walk into any All Time World XI blindfolded.4 - Kumar Sangakkara. Not quite the ATG material but easily one of the best.3.5 - Ravi Ashwin. Pretty good on paper and in reality as well, but if you look closely there's some chinks in the armor.3 - Jonathan Trott. I mean, let's face it, nobody's staying up late to watch him bat.2.5 - Kamran Akmal. You could do worse, but that's not saying much is it?2 - Pramodya Wickramasinghe, on a good day.1.5 - Manoj Prabhakar, bowling to Sanath Jayasuriya in world cups.1 - Chamara Kapugedera.0.5 - Chamara Kapugedera, but facing the 80s Windies.