Gonzo novels about cricket, missing persons and Tamil terrorists may be a niche genre, but it has found its masterpiece in Shehan Karunatilaka’s Chinaman. The tale of one sports reporter’s search for the great lost star of Sri Lankan test cricket, Pradeep Mathew, Chinaman uses cricket as a metaphor for the corruption and intransigence which plagued Sri Lanka throughout the eighties and nineties. The cricketing authorities, corrupt and riven by patronage and ethnic divisions act as a perfect microcosm for the state itself.
Dissolute, downtrodden and disgracefully partial in the best traditions of the cricket hack, WG Karunasena has months to live, his liver destroyed by years of abuse. His last days are dedicated to searching down Mathew, and restoring him to his rightful place in the Sri Lankan test pantheon. Mathew himself, a spinner with a fiendish repertoire including the flipper, doosra, the eponymous left arm chinaman and even a double bouncer, is an elusive presence throughout the novel. Former acquaintances deny knowledge of him, or grossly inflate their role in his career. His statistics are erased from the record books, and his greatest achievements (including a world record for wickets in one test) are invalidated when bad weather stops play. Some feel that his talent was never allowed to flourish as he was Tamil, others that he caused his own downfall through his arrogant behaviour.
For Karunasena, the pure talent embodied by Mathew elevates him to the level of Test great, as does the winning mentality he bought to the team, being the first Sri Lankan to respond to sledging from more aggressive opponents (Sri Lankan players previously being told that they were ‘gentlemen first, cricketers second’). His reappraisal will counter the corruption that has plagued the sports administration, who attempt to block any attempts to highlight Mathew’s achievements, forcing WG to pursue unofficial and illicit sources of information, from gangsters and secret tapes.
The novel is well-written and ambitious, but Karunatilaka’s great achievement is his realisation that the figure of the spinner, primed to deceive opponents in a game of cunning and attrition, can be the basis of a great dramatic character. Likewise, the five day test is team sport’s great test of mental stamina, endurance and toughness, making it an ideal substitute for politics. Matches are picked over forensically, and cricket’s histories are guarded as jealously as court reports or laws; Wisden has, for sports fans, all the authority that Hansard holds for constitutionalists.
Karunatilaka captures the bickering and bias of cricket ‘experts’ with a great ear, and his sprawling narrative covers betting scandals, infighting between touring colleagues, the ex-players’ television gravy train, corrupt selectors and all the other issues which have tarnished test cricket in recent times, whilst maintaining an enthusiastic, childish love for the purity of the game itself. Likewise, his attacks on the system which has held back Sri Lanka’s development in the political world are motivated by a desire for a better future.
Chinaman is a shaggy dog story, a narrative propelled loosely along by a drunken and unreliable narrator and an elusive subject, taking in paranoid midgets, terrorists, Geordie child abusers, retired test cricketers, and many more unlikely characters along the way. It brings to mind the later days of Hunter S Thompson, had he tried his hand at noir, or tuned to Test Match Special more often. It is almost certainly a unique read, and one which I urge you to track down.
For another view on the book, try this review in the Guardian, particularly the comments from Msmlee below the line.
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