Amritesh Mukherjee reviews Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew by Shehan Karunatilaka (published by Penguin Random House India, 2011).
There’s a dearth of cricket stories in the market. Biographies and autobiographies you’ll find many in the market, but great cricket novels? Hardly. That’s why a book like Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka, where cricket drives the central themes and metaphors, where the sport is present in every vein of the failures and triumphs, is magical, as magical as the game it’s around.
Chinaman is the story of WG Karunasena, a drunkard of a journalist in search of the elusive Chinaman bowler, Pradeep Mathew. His passion and deep knowledge of the game (reflecting Shehan’s own passion and love for cricket) are a treat to read, whether analysing the Sri Lankan players and cricket administration with his friends or describing a live match. This, and many other little factors that shape and create this book, is why the book, and will always be, always cherished by cricket lovers like yours truly.
When a New Zealand journo, with a nose resembling the beak of his national bird, asked me why Lankans have long names, I told him I would rather have a long name than a long nose. He replied he’d rather have a long you-know-what. Such is the insightful cricketing analysis that goes on in the press box.
– Shehan Karunatilaka, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew
Fiction Meets Non-Fiction
Shehan Karunatilaka plays deftly between fiction and non-fiction, using enough of the “real world” figures and statistics to bring a realistic layer to the story while adding his fictional touches. There are discussions about ICC’s unfair treatment of Muralidharan, the fierce and defiant captaincy of Ranatunga, Sri Lanka, lifting the World Cup against all odds, alongside the changes that the shifting political landscape evoked. From my perspective, the “non-fiction” or “factual” element of it helps Shehan tell the overarching story better, not one of cricket, but that of his country.
Moreover, the novel’s biography format fits into the most common type of cricket book: autobiographies and memoirs. Cricket biographies are like the modern premier leagues: there are simply too many. And so, one can’t help but wonder if that’s Shehan’s way of paying ode to those stories. Or perhaps it’s his way of making the story more realistic, more relatable, more engrossing for the audience. Thanks to its illustrations and pictures, were someone to just glance through the book, they might see it as another biography.
And maybe it’s just speculation on my part, but intermixing a fictional story with true events and figures gives the book an added air of authenticity. Therefore, through this sense of “factuality,” Shehan’s work is imbued with even more life.
Throughout my life, even when times were tough, I never stopped buying books. Or, come to think of it, booze. My library is dusty and well stocked. My liver is well worn.
– Shehan Karunatilaka, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew
Karunasena is a fascinating storytelling choice. His alcoholism is established well in the beginning, so a lack of narrative reliability is a given. When so much of the text revolves around memory (a bowler everyone seems to have watched and admired but doesn’t have any records of), choosing a narrator whose retention isn’t his strongest suit creates intriguing questions about the nature of the text and its believability, to say the least.
Capturing the Essence of Sri Lanka in Chinaman
But let’s come to our titular player now, Pradeep Mathew, who can be seen as a direct metaphor for Sri Lanka. After all, he’s an ambitious man with places to go but also held back because of internal conflicts. Reminds you of Sri Lanka? Like the country, he has a diverse ethnic background. Like the country, he had a lot of promise and talent but couldn’t quite reach the heights he could (or wanted to). Like the country, he’s survived and persevered amidst impossible conditions. You see the parallels?
Sri Lankans across the world stand taller, believing that now anything is possible. The war would end, the nation would prosper and pigs would take to the air.
– Shehan Karunatilaka, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew
One of my favourite sections is around Sri Lanka picking the World Cup in 1996 against the mighty Australia, representing a watershed moment for the country’s morale. And Shehan has captured the emotions, the disbelief, and the jubilation in his distinct style.
Having read his other two works (Chats of the Dead and The Birth Lottery), I would like to think that I understand Shehan’s writing better. His stories reflect his land and the humour is derivative of the people who laugh amidst adversity. The difficult questions his stories pose are an attempt to expect better of his society and governance, and the inanities mirror the absurdities of living in an unstable country. This humour is not restricted to cricket and politics; it seeps into everyday, mundane activities.
The Duckworth-Lewis method of resolving rain-affected games has divided the cricketing fraternity into those who do not understand it and those who pretend they do. Rumour has it that it involves calculus, astrology, quantum mechanics and the use of dice. Either way teams get screwed.
– Shehan Karunatilaka, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew
Conclusion
Even if you aren’t a fan of cricket or political stories, you’ll find much to enjoy in Chinaman. It’s also a story of a wife coming to terms with her drunkard husband, a son affected by his father’s absences and temperament, a man held back by societal hierarchies and wrongs, and more.
Recommended Reading: The Emotional Cost of War in A Passage North
Wildly ambitious and innovative, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew is an easy standout among South-Asian literature. Shehan’s voice (that only matures with every subsequent book, in my opinion) captures the various complexities of his motherland while providing a lot for every cricket lover to cherish. Anyone interested in stories on politics, intergenerational conflicts, Sri Lanka, and cricket must pick this up.
Have you read this innovative novel based on cricket and Sri Lanka? What were your thoughts? Comment below and let us know!
