Aravind Adiga and Jock Serong both feature cricket-mad brothers in absorbing new novels

CRICKET and its power over two pairs of brothers is at the heart of two novels set on different continents.

IN one of those serendipitous consonances that occur surprisingly frequently in literary fiction, Indian author Aravind Adiga and Australian Jock Serong have simultaneously produced novels featuring pairs of cricket-obsessed brothers.

Manjunath Kumar and his older brother Radha Krishna are propelled by their chutney-seller single father Mohan, who sees his sons’ cricketing prowess as a way out of the Mumbai slums and enforces a list of odd prohibitions designed to keep them focused on the game. Darren Keefe and his older brother Wally have the unconditional support of a gutsy, loving, single mother who works long hours as a barmaid to fund their sporting needs.

In a messier and less coherent novel than his fine first three, Adiga takes cricket as the prism through which to survey — often satirically, as he did so tellingly in Last Man in Tower — modern life in cricket-obsessed Mumbai, decrying the rising taint of corruption, of match-fixing and illegal betting and comparing heroic moments in Indian history to the way Indians once played test cricket. Now it is all “Bread and Tendulkar”, although one character sees the game as “ideal for male social control in India …” citing “The deep and intrinsic silliness of cricket, all that fair play and honourable draw stuff,” and goes on to speculate on the crime and rape statistics should Mumbai boys start playing, say, American football.

Adiga’s main character, the talented teenage batsman Manju is endlessly conflicted over the role of cricket in his life and the competing attractions of forensic science over his sexuality, his sense of self and his relationship with his less successful brother. Meanwhile the all important day on which selections will be made for the prestigious Mumbai teams approaches and his anti-cricket friend Javed tempts and confuses with alternative attractions.

Like Adiga, Serong starts his tale with his brothers’ cricketing childhood, but his lively critique of current sporting mores is also a well-paced thriller in which each chronological chapter is prefaced by a little chunk of the immediate present: our hero bound, gagged, shot through the knee and stuffed in the boot of a moving car, but working creatively, chapter by chapter, to free himself despite the apparent inevitability of imminent death.

There is a lovely lightness, a poetry of space and movement, in the early chapters with their tale of backyard cricket and brotherly love/hate rivalry. As the boys mature their ways part — Wally via marriage and a little cricket-mad daughter to a life of stiff rectitude in the Australian test side; Darren via a career-derailing injury to the one-day teams and a party-boy life.

The accounts of magical partnerships, memorable sledges and violent bowler/batsman clashes are detailed and technical but never dull, created by someone who knows and loves the game, and judiciously interpolated to ratchet up tension as well as provide background to the issues soon to arise. Darren is the recognisable face of the larrikin sporting hero, reluctantly ageing but still able to grab headlines and public love no matter what his crimes: “People don’t want their celebrities to just disappear … They’re still happy if they’re hating them. That’s the modern truth right there.”

There is a good deal of uncomfortable modern truth in both these novels, but Serong’s is particularly potent, pithy and relevant to this sport-obsessed country.

Originally published as Aravind Adiga and Jock Serong both feature cricket-mad brothers in absorbing new novels