Left-arm spinners cannot unclog your drains, teach your children or cure you of d isease.

But once in a while, the very best of them will bowl a ball that will br ing an entire nation to its feet. And while there may be no practical use in tha t, there is most certainly value. Chinaman is a book that won't give you much more than superficial knowledge abou t the intricacies of cricket, politics or racism. But late in the book, the very best of the characters, Ariyaratne Byrd, will write a 'letter' to W.G.Karunasen a, that will bring tears to your eyes. When I saw a book, classified strictly as fiction, that seemed to be about crick et, written by a subcontinent author, I thought it would be crap like "The Zoya Factor". Somehow, I picked the book up, and started reading it, and once I did, I felt deeply ashamed of my initial judgement. When Roshan Mahanama was describe d as the Great Lankan Opening Batsman (GLOB), I smiled. When Sidhu was described as the Turbaned Indian Commentator (TIC), I laughed. When match-fixing involved 'kadale' (groundnuts) making the Sri Lankan players get upset stomachs, making them unable to play, I was in splits. And when W.G. gets his last ever visitor i n that hospital, I had pools in my eyes. The premise of the book is simple enough: Karunasena is a Sri Lankan sports jour nalist, who is generous (read out of control) with his consumption of alcohol. H e and his friend and statistician Ari, are the only two people who gave a second thought to Pradeep Sivanathan Mathew, who they believe was Sri Lanka's greatest spin bowler ever. Pradeep Mathew, the enigma these two men are behind, is a Tam il bowler, who can imitate any action in the world, chooses to settle with Left Arm Chinaman bowling, and foxes batsmen with deliveries he learnt from a mysteri ous six-fingered bowling coach. Pradeep plays seven test matches, and disappears after the GLOB's wedding. Karunasena intends--eventually--to write a book about Pradeep, and so he chases around leads, that expose him to an intricate web of politics, racism, match-fixing, alleged assassination-fixing, cricketers' secret s, the country's cricketing board's secrets and midgets who electronically bugge d cricket stadiums. What's truly beautiful about this book, though, is the way it treats its charact ers. The characters are indelibly flawed, and some of them are downright evil, b ut Karunatilaka unflinchingly maintains a cool and un-judgemental description at every turn. Take Kugarajah, for instance--the man that claimed to orchestrate a ssassinations of political leaders. Or short-skirt-sporting Danila--one of the f inest characters in the book in my opinion, who flirts with men twice her age, o ur alcoholic protagonist one of them. Or even Sheila, W.G.'s ever-patient wife, who ponders whether to marry another man--who promises to take her to the pyrami ds, no less--soon after W.G. dies. Shehan is a great author in the making--even a literary figure, I daresay, if he manages to carry forward this brave portraya l of characters in shades of gray in future works. Using an obsession with cricket as a metaphor, Shehan explores certain topics th at are extremely easy to romanticize, and sharply and deftly avoids falling into cliche, especially when he talks about patriotism without quite talking about i t. The one thing I love more than an anti-hero in a book, is a protagonist who is a hypocrite. And W.G. could bloody well be Holden Caulfield, turned old and alcoh olic. When he is battling withdrawal and attempting to write, and the creature a t the base of his skull roars for domestic dispute, he views the world with thes e impeccable gray-tinted glasses, to put a bleak spin (excuse the pun) on a fami liar phrase. He accuses Ari of having a skewed sense of morality--the guy would have no issues with bribing policemen or driving drunk, but disapproved strongly of cheating in a card game--but associates himself with men who could possibly be terrorists. His remorse would only come in a drug-induced near-death state, a

nd even then, not completely. He would pretend to be holier-than-thou with Ari, when the topic of Jonny possibly having committed a crime--while he believes in his heart that he has. And even though W.G. is a foul-mouthed arrack-gulping ungrateful asshole of a hu sband, father and friend, you find yourself drawn to him, and rooting for him at every possible instant. And that, is where Shehan Karunatilaka deserves every s ingle accolade he has won for this book. Possibly the only thing that I disliked about the book was the part titled "Foll ow on"--the last part, where the author tries to cover up more holes than he can manage. That's the one thing I hate in a book--the whole book going on like a b eautiful dream, and the last page proclaiming that it was a dream, and involving a character waking up. It could have remained a fictional account, but towards the end, the author tries to bring reality in, almost as if to apologize for wea ving such an amazing yarn, and the only thing it accomplishes is to ruin the moo d of a book. Perhaps the author should have realized the difference between a gl oriously unfinished tale and one that ends disappointingly: with an unbelievably pious and oh-so-flawless character who does everything right. Yet, forced ending notwithstanding, the book leaves the reader with a heavy hear t and sudden emotion, and if you're either a cricket fan or a writer, or both: i nfinite possibility for fan-fiction. To summarize, though, I quote Ari: "Good bless you and your cockeyed theories. I miss them all."