There has been a wider explosion of the carrom ball too, in the decade and a half since Ajantha Mendis popularised it, and every second squad in every T20 league seems to include someone who bowls it.

In the first of a series on cricket in fiction, a look at Chinaman, in which the game isn't so much plot driver as plinth There is more cricket fiction than is probably thought to exist. Screeds of it ...