Discovering the power of cricket

Sunny Fernando, Romesh Gunesekera's hero, is nearly 15 when he first discovers the power of cricket. It's 1970, he lives in Manila but his family (these are pre-Sri Lanka days) is from Ceylon.

His father was a journalist but now works in public relations, his mother is dead. Beautiful teenage Tina has just moved into their neighbourhood. Her family is Ceylonese too. Robby, the flash guy in Sunny's circle, the one who smokes smuggled Gitanes and reads Henry Miller, wants to learn cricket. Somewhere in the storeroom Sunny has a bat and ball, somehow the idea of a match appeals to all the dads.

Comes the day and Lester, Sunny's father, cooks up a curry storm as assorted ex-pats of the East turn up, blow out, talk politics (revolution is already in the Philippines' air) and cultural contrasts. Lester sees cricket as an alternative to American baseball and basketball, dreams of pan-Asian cricket. "Imagine Laos, Thailand, Indonesia all hitting the Brits for a six. A true game of the South." Then, right there in Sunny's backyard, they play. Tina's batting dazzles and they challenge the fellows from Happy Valley. Cricket becomes a chord in Sunny's inner music, even when he isn't listening to it. When he finally does, it is what brings harmony and resolution.

Romesh Gunesekera's novel has a deceptively simple surface, the story of how Sunny grows up, goes to England to study, shivers, discovers love, earns a living, puts down English roots, becomes a father. One layer down is astute, acute social observation, what people eat, drink, wear, what groups they form, how they talk. Underneath runs a timeline of the last 35 years, wars, migration, terrorism, globalisation. What knits it together are the closely observed characters, Hector, wise and benevolent, Lester's best friend and Sunny's mentor, and Sunny himself.

Sunny's journey becomes ours. Through his eyes we see how fast everyday technology changes, how soon a baby turns into an adolescent. Sunny dithers, switches, dreams. He says he's thinking but, really, he is letting himself feel. And what he doesn't feel is that he belongs. Anywhere. You will know this feeling. What starts off as adolescent insecurity stays with us long after in that vague "is that all there is?" feeling as we pass each of those stages when we sort of assumed life would have shown us its pattern.

Then comes the day when we see our own adolescent children doing what we did, thinking that they are the first ones in the world to be this way. That's when you start wondering, silently and privately, what can untangle it all.

In Sunny's case it turns out to be cricket. He is drawn back to it in May 2002, when Sri Lanka's mighty team - Jayawardene, Jayasuriya, Muralitharan, de Silva, Atapattu - arrived. "Suddenly the most important thing in the world was to see Sri Lanka play England in a full Test in London. He had to make his life turn the way he wanted it to, like a true spinner's ball."

By this time he has found his vocation. He's become a photographer. (The book carries on its flyleaf Henri Cartier-Bresson's dictum: "Shooting a picture is holding your breath ... ") He is convinced he will find the shot he's looking for at one of Sri Lanka's matches. Both the "what" and the "where" are seriously significant here, for this is how Sunny discovers both heart and home. Gunesekera's gift is to bring us to it too, with surprise and joy, in a great burst of comprehension.