"Lash it like Lara" coming soon

It has been called cricket's answer to `Bend it like Beckham', although in the light of the England football captain's recent troubles off the field, cricket might not want to get too close to the winter game. `Wondrous Oblivion', however, is a heart-warming tale about a young Jewish boy growing up in London in 1963.

David Wiseman, played by Sam Smith, is an 11-year-old totally obsessed with cricket yet absolutely clueless about how to play the game. Why does cricket attract so many David Wiseman's? His fate, like so many of his type, is to become the scorer. That is until a Jamaican family move in next door, grub up the rose bushes and install a cricket net in the back garden.

The father, Dennis Samuels (Delroy Lindo), takes the boy under his wing and gives him some coaching so that he eventually becomes a key member of the team. As well as bringing out the latent talent in young David, he also manages to spice up the life of David's mother while his father is working all hours. It is not so much a case of Beckham bending it round the wall as over the garden fence.

So the story unfolds, with plenty of moral and racial undertones to give a serious message to the cricket theme. It is interwoven to provide a thoroughly entertaining film that will appeal to cricketers and non-cricketers alike, as the problems of growing up in as "a wide-eyed boy in a narrow-minded world" (as the publicity hand-out has it) are vividly portrayed.

It is good to see the game as the centrepiece of a dramatic work, but there has to be one criticism. Why, oh why, if cricket is to be at the heart of a film, cannot more attention be paid to cricketing detail? Among the credits, that run for some three minutes, are all the usual titles that mean nothing to non-film buffs. Among the best boys and second grips or whatever, appears the name of Phil Simmons as cricket coach and advisor.

On wonders whether he was solely responsible for the lack of cricketing technique shown by the actors. To be fair, the batting sequences are not too bad but the bowling is appalling. It is perhaps understandable that casting is based on acting ability rather than a good bowling action. However, when an actor has as few lines to deliver as the one playing a certain Garfield Sobers, it is not unreasonable to ask that he should look like a cricketer. The best one can say in this instance is that he used his left arm for what passed as bowling.

`Wondrous Oblivion' opens on April 23rd with a PG certificate. Unfortunately, the bowling actions should be X-rated.