Book Review: Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

With summer on its way, let’s curl up with a novel that deals with that great American sport . . . cricket.

Cricket! you exclaim. What’s American about that? But listen to Chuck Ramkissoon, the flamboyant West Indian at the center of Joseph O’Neill’s recent novel Netherland, and he will set you straight.

“Cricket was the first modern team sport in America,” Ramkissoon explains. “It came before baseball and football. Cricket has been played in New York since the 1770s . . . Cricket matches were watched by thousands of fans. It was a professional sport reported in all the newspapers. There were clubs all over the country. . . So it is wrong to see cricket in America as most people see it . . . an immigrant sport. It is a bona fide American pastime."

If your eyes are already glazing over at this, you may want to pass on Netherland, with its Field of Dreams celebration of Yankee cricket. Perhaps you (like me) have been stuck at dinner or, even worse, on a long flight, next to a cricket enthusiast, who will quote every statistic and will elaborate, ad nauseam, on the differences between a bouncer and a bunsen, a flipper and a floater. And did you ever hear about Dennis Lillee and Javed Miandad in 1981 . . .

Hey, wake up! No matter if your favorite cricket was Pinocchio’s sidekick, you may want to give this novel a chance. Even I got caught up in Ramkissoon’s plans to convert an old airfield into the New York Cricket Club, with two thousand members shelling out a grand each in dues, plus initiation fees; twelve exhibition matches every summer, with eight thousand fans paying fifty bucks per ticket. Just dream for a moment: India playing Pakistan in New York, with 70 million watching via TV and Internet in India alone, and Nike and Coke lining up for sponsorship deals.

Article Author: Ted Gioia

Ted Gioia is a writer and musician. He is editor of jazz.com, and also writes on books at Great Books Guide and The New Canon

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