Eleven-year-old David Wiseman is mad about cricket - unfortunately, he's not terribly good at it; indeed his stunning ineptitude with bat and ball has made him the laughing-stock of his school. When a West Indian family move next door and build a cricket net in their back garden, he's in seventh heaven - he can practise, hone his non-existent skills - but in the sheltered protectorate of 1960s England, their arrival serves to inflame local feeling and before long, David finds himself caught up in a spiteful tangle of racial tensions, a war of gossip and petty vandalism.