It was the August of 1976. The sun burned down from a sky that had turned bronze in the heat. Grass, everywhere, was brown and parched. There had been no rain for two months, and for the last six weeks the temperature had barely dropped below 90F. It was the most memorable summer of my young life and, 13, I was going with my father to see the cricket.

But not just any cricket. Although my father is Sri Lankan, we were not going to see Sri Lanka play England (for the very good reason that Sri Lanka was not yet a Test-rated country). We were going to see England play the West Indies – and we were going to see them at the Oval, for the final Test match of the summer. England were already 2-0 down, and playing for pride and self-preservation. And when I say self-preservation, it really was. The West Indies deployed a truly fearsome array of fast bowlers in that match: Michael Holding, Andy Roberts and Wayne Daniel; and this was in the days before batsmen wore helmets, or indeed much in the way of protection beyond pads, gloves and box. It really was a matter of self-preservation. The pitch was a dustbowl, burned the colour of African mud.

We arrived at the Oval to find it ringing, vibrant with West Indian fans playing instruments, singing and dancing. But I was a serious, studious boy – something of the archetype of the Asian school swot. We settled down at mid-wicket, with our drinks and our sandwiches, and waited for the day to begin.

And what I remember even today, 41 years later, is watching Michael Holding gliding over the ground as he ran in to bowl, moving as smoothly as liquid mercury, and then the leap into the bowling stride, a single puff of dust as the bowl struck the pitch, and an image of the batsman, contorted into some position of avoidance or defence. Even with my young, sharp eyes, I never once saw the ball moving through the air, but only the effects it had on wicket and man.

There has never been a team like that West Indies team, that came into itself on that tour of England in 1976 and then proceeded to dominate international cricket for nearly the next 20 years. This marvellous book tells the story of how they reached that position of dominance and, much more difficult, how they kept it for so long. It’s a tale of resistance, revolt, and hours and hours and hours of sheer bloody hard work made to seem completely effortless in the smoothness of Michael Holding’s run up or Viv Richard’s lifting the ball to the boundary for 6. It’s a tale of all the once-colonial peoples, such as my father’s Sri Lankans, realising that they really could match and beat the English who had given them these games. It’s a reminder of how far we’ve come from the everyday racism of the 1970s. And it manages to do all this through the medium of grown men throwing and hitting a ball around for interminable periods of time. Cricket is one-on-one combat in a team context; it’s gladiatorial and, despite all the talk of the spirit of cricket, inherently confrontational, veiling its violence behind its pristine whites. It’s the most perfect game and also the most ridiculous. And this is one of the best books I’ve read about it.