I am one of those strange Australians who doesn’t understand or follow two of our national alternate religions (football and cricket). I have read NIPS IX, and whilst I thought a multicultural cricket team a clever premise for a book, I have to say I was not really hooked (no pun intended). So I was very surprised by my total absorption in Ruth Starke’s sequel NIPS go National.

Lan and his Asian-Australian cricket team the NIPS (from North Illaba Primary School – before you go complaining about racist slurs) have been invited to play in a cricket competition in Melbourne called the Harmony Cup.  As the name would suggest the competition is designed to bring together school-aged, multi-cultural cricket teams from around Australia. 

Lan accepts the invitation but his problems begin when David Ho, the NIPS brilliant all-rounder, rings from Hong Kong to say he’s broken his arm and won’t be back in time for the competition.  Lan and the remaining team-members decide that the solution is to ring a talk-back radio station during drive-time and put out a call for a replacement.  Lan is close to desperation having taken responses from ‘a Texan who didn’t play cricket but thought he’d like to learn, a woman who said the carnival was an appalling waste of government money, and a man who said cricket was an Aussie game and why didn’t he go back to Vietnam?’, amongst others, before a ‘Chinese-Australian, third bat, medium pace bowler’ called Sam Chin Po rings.  Sam tries out, proves to better than most of the other team members, and goes with them to Melbourne.

The complications begin for Lan when he has to deal with his vice-captain’s apparent jealousy of Sam’s talent and reach a climax when he discovers Sam’s mysterious secret.  The story bounces along a bit too quickly at first, in Starke’s rush to get the NIPS to the Harmony Cup, but the rest of story is really well paced and even if you do spot the mystery about Sam early on, you will still be held to the last wondering how Lan will deal with the predicament they’re in.

The book is laced with lots of humour, such as when Spinner McGinty, the NIPS’ coach, inadvertently gives Lan the idea of keeping a captain’s diary while ‘on tour’:

‘Every cricketer and his dog writes a book these days ­– or gets some scribe to write a book for him, more like. Captains write diaries and tour logs, umpires write their memoirs.  Sometimes I think every bloke on the pitch is scribblin’ away.  Beats me how anyone has time to play cricket.’

Starke uses Spinner to make lots of witty digs about sport, which will keep adult readers amused and she uses Lan’s diary as a subtle device to draw out all the life-lessons which can learnt from sport, or to explain something which the reader may not know about the game without sounding too preachy or teacherly.  She seems to have her eye in when it comes to developing the characters further, and makes some hard hitting points about the issue of multi-culturalism and black-white relations in Australia.

Sequels are notoriously difficult things to do well.  It is a hard task to keep it as fresh and innovative as the first book, but Starke does this and more! In fact I would even go so far as to say that NIPS go National is even better than NIPS IX.   Highly recommended – for cricket lovers and cricket-phobics alike!!!

Review by Sarah Mayor Cox

© 2003 Sarah Mayor Cox