Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka
Aside from the controversial political correctness of its provocative title, Chinaman can lay claim to one other distinction. It appeared in bookstores about the same time Sri Lanka and India, two of the world’s top cricketing countries, were touring England. As any cricket aficionado will testify, there is little difference between the drama that unfolds on and around a cricket field like match-fixing or wickets thrown and the endless backroom deal-making over who gets what in return for favours done or on call, the staple diet of politicos in the corridors of power.
Karunatilaka’s venture also reminds one of another effort by a fellow Sri Lankan: Romesh Gunesekera’s 2006 novel The Match. In The Match, Gunesekera encapsulates the experiences of his Sri Lankan childhood, adolescence in the Philippines (where his father was on assignment with the Asian Development Bank), and adulthood and resettlement in Britain as an overseas Sri Lankan with a nostalgic craving for cricket, string-hoppers and fiery curries such as only the Sinhalese and Tamilians can cook up. Both Karunatilaka and Gunesekere use cricket as the backdrop around which to conjure up a novel about the murky life and seedy, sectarian politics of modern day Sri Lanka.
The chinaman—as cricketing terms go for a deceptive, unplayable bowling delivery from one generation to another—belongs to the same league as the googly and doosrah. As the late Indian spin-bowling wizard Subash Gupte once explained to me, it is a tricky legspin with an off-break action: the ball, innocuously pitches a little wide of the offstump, suddenly swerves to the right and clips the leg wicket. Many are the batsmen who have fallen for this ruse just when they appeared unbeatable and poised to set the bowling on fire.
A retired Sri Lankan sportswriter, Wijedasa Gamini Karunasena, known as Wije for short, a honorific commemorating English cricket legend Dr W.G. Grace, makes it his life’s mission to track down and immortalise Pradeep Sivanathan Mathew, a legendary spin-bowler who has mysteriously disappeared, or been “diplomatically” airbrushed out of the island’s cricketing annals for reasons not unrelated to his Tamil ancestry. What should normally have been a straightforward job was complicated by the ageing Wije’s addiction to arrack, Sri Lanka’s lethal alcohol, that limits the author’s output through bouts of hospitalization and/or medication.
Regardless, Wije’s quest for his unsung genius leads him to unearth slowly but steadily several astounding facts: a cricket coach with six fingers, a secret bunker below a famous stadium with remarkable archival data about cricket tours, players and their performances, a Tamil Tiger warlord, and amazing revelations about Sri Lanka cricket.
Once Wije picks up his writing stride, the flow is crisp and arresting. Here is one example:
‘Fancy being done by a bloody chinaman,’ said the 1930s English batsman Walter Robins in a jibe that today would have required a disciplinary hearing. It was Mathew’s bread-and-butter delivery. Pitching outside the batsman’s bat and cutting into him. Ellis Achong, a West Indian of Chinese descent, dismissed Robins with one such delivery, and sparked both the outburst and the term.
A ball turning in from a left-arm bowler is not considered dangerous as the one that turns away. The logic is that it is not difficult to combat something that moves towards you.
Mathew bowled two variations of the chinaman. One with cocked wrist and one with rolling fingers. He would drift it to wide outside the offstump, giving it the appearance of a wayward delivery, and then rip it in at awkward angles. The chinaman accounted for most of Mathew’s early wickets and remained his stock delivery throughout his career. It can be difficult to combat something that moves towards you, particularly if it arrives unexpectedly.
The ‘92 Australia Test in Sri Lanka is remembered for magnificent centuries by Gurusinha, Ranatunga and Kaluwitharana, for three wickets in 13 balls by a young spinner named Shane, and as a shining example of Sri Lankan incompetence. Having made Australia to follow on, and chasing a target of 180 for an era-defying victory. Lanka slumped from 127-3 to fall short by 16 runs. It was a defeat of great immaturity. Many believe the match was fixed.
Aussie utility all-rounder Greg Mathews was named Man of the Match for his part in triggering the collapse. Another Mathew took a matchbag of 8-70, but received no mention by virtue of being on the losing side. It was the last game ever to be played at the Tyronne Cooray Stadium.
In the second test against New Zealand in 1987 in Asgiriya, the tourists after a modest 73-2 at lunch came out guns blazing after the break smacking the home side’s medium-pacers out of the attack to hoist 111 in 30 minutes. That was when captain Mendis tossed the ball to Pradeep Mathew.
What followed, according to Wije, was “the finest spell of spin-bowling or any bowling on this or any other planet that I or anyone else could ever have seen.”
Kiwi batsman Turner taunted the young chinaman-bowler by imitating his ungainly action as he tossed the ball to mid-on. Pradeep, unperturbed, returned to his mark with intent writ large on his face. He adjusted his headband, rolled up his sleeves as if to commit a long premeditated act of violence and delivered three perfect googlies which Crowe Jr read and avoided. On the fourth ball, the batsman attempted a cut only to find the ball reversing on to his stumps.
With the new batsman, Mathew shifted to orthodox spin. The flight and drift were perfect, the ball curling just outside of the batsman’s reach. The trajectory was like a whip in mid-crack. Then followed the lethal deliveries that signalled the demise of Crowe Sr and Evan Gray.
New Zealand was now 113-5. Turner, after knocking Gurusinha for a few boundaries, made the fatal error of taking a single on the last ball. He thus faced Mathew who dished out an unplayable finger-spinner, followed by an undercutter, the ball backspinning and staying low. Turner kicked the ptch in annoyance and said something unprintable to Mathew.
Mathew bowled him a chinaman and a googly, both of which Turner saw out. Then, out of nowhere, a medium-paced leaper rose off the pitch and smashed into Turner’s hook nose. The batsman advanced down the pitch and had to be restrained.
Says Wije: “We watched in stunned silence as carom flicks and darters were mixed with stock deliveries. The variation was mesmerising, the control exquisite. Hadlee, Bracewell and Sneddon scattered like hacked limbs as Mathew raced to his eighth wicket (8-50). Mathew then bowled another double-bounce ball, this time turning from off to leg to take the middle stump. Turner stormed off in disgust. New Zealand had slumped from 111-2 to 117 all out. Mathew’s figure sat plainly on the scoreboard: 10-51, two better than Jim Laker.
But all joy is fleeting. The New Zealanders refused to take the field after tea, calling the pitch “a shocker.” The two captains were called and without pomp or ceremony the match was abandoned, as was the New Zealand tour of Sri Lanka. “We were told that any paper publishing a match report would have is licence revoked. We looked on forlornly as history was erased. It was the match that would never exist!”
A fine yarn by any account, Karunatilaka, who lives and works in Singapore, has made a great start with his first novel. One expects a sequel or more from this gifted story-teller who also doubles up as a composer of advertisements and rock music!