Watk. Raja. Jane (i). Shirvan. Cricket – the way it brings emotion and life and pain and memory and regret all hauntingly and combustively to light. John. Jane (iii). Shivalkar. Men and women whose destinies don’t make sense, scattered across eras and continents, their stories a miraculous tapestry of near misses, strange turns and quiet, unglamorous devotion. Frank. RR. Vowles. Carmino.

From the freakish minute that might have prevented the slow decline of West Indies cricket to the jazz trombonist blocked from the England side, Christian Ryan, award-winning author of Golden Boy, reconstructs forgotten, fragile moments with breathtaking care.

The result is a wildly ambitious, compulsively readable exploration of the strange, luminous ways cricket shapes a life, sizzling with humour and verve and tragedy.