Butterfingers or Amar Kishen is all geared up again for a new game packed with excitement. Author Khyrunnisa A’s Clean Bowled: Butterfingers! (the third novel in the Butterfingers series) takes us on a new adventure with Amar and his friends Kishore, Kiran, Jayaram, Eric and Thomas.
Butterfingers has indeed been attracting many young readers with his clumsiness and ludicrous schemes that take him right into the heart of trouble and then somehow out of it as well. The author truly knows how to keep her readers entertained.
Clean Bowled.. is a completely new story and is all about school, friendship, sports and little disasters. Amar’s gimmicks and his impromptu errors every morning at the breakfast table are indeed hilarious.
At the book’s heart is the passion for cricket and so the teenagers plan (led by Amar) to organise a match in memory of a certain Colonel Nadkarni. However, there is a mix-up, as is always the case with Butterfingers, and an irreverent letter finds its way to the boardroom and catches the chairman’s eye. The letter is indeed uproarious as it describes each of the teachers in a not-so-pleasant manner and that is when the trouble begins. The chairman appears to be pleased with the concept of the cricket match atleast as it aids his idea that the staff of the Green Park Higher Secondary School must remain healthy.
The teachers go ballistic when they find out that they are expected to play a match while the students are unhappy to see their proposed match slipping out of their hands. But, Butterfingers strikes again in his usual fashion.
Meanwhile, there are two thieves at large. One is stealing jewellery and the other is after sports gear. The children get distracted and the teachers relieved after their sports gear gets stolen from the school shed.
It is in the midst of all this chaos that Butterfingers and his friends turn cricket into the very innovative ‘Crack It’ where anything other than cricket equipment is used to play the game! The game is played with everything from umbrellas and walking sticks to sapotas and tomatoes. It is held between the classes VIII A and B, wherein, Butterfingers manages to reveal his abilities again. His team emerges victorious and he succeeds in trapping the jewel thief too. Dinesh Nadkarni, the colonel’s nephew, rewards the students with a new set of cricket gear which they selflessly donate to the school.
The ‘Under-Fifty vs Under-Fifteen’ match is finally held and sees both the teachers and the students display great talent and it ends in a harmonious tie. Here again, Butterfingers manages to find the missing Safed Haathi or the lost diamond, hence cracking the mystery of the missing jewel as well.
The book will appeal to every young boy who has enjoyed playing cricket in school and experienced difficulty with authority. The story moves at a quick pace and the readers will for sure be laughing out loud as they cheer Amar and his friends on.