A very strange book in the best way. Most sports books that I've read try to get you to identify with a hero, detail the ebb and flow of specific games, and are basically uncritical cheerleaders for their sport. This one does none of that; in fact hardly any cricket is actually played.

The story reminds me of the quote, “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” Take that idea, but imagine hearing rumours of one of these people with equal talent, tracing those stories, and trying to disentangle the truth from the deceptions and drunken misremembrances, and you'll get an idea of how romantic W. G.'s quest is.