The English game that gives Richard Bean's play its title isn't the one that will take two English clubs to Moscow next week. But that's fair enough, since almost all the players competing in football's European showdown will have come from other nations. No, the game somewhat unevenly brought to life here is another one we English invented but don't play too well: cricket.

Ten men and a boy come to an unnamed London park for a 35-over match against another amateur team. This turns out to be close run. But you'd have to be very fond of munching your fingers if you were to call the game nail-biting because it doesn't fully get going until late in Sean Holmes's production and, in any case, Bean's main interest isn't the result but the mixed bag of players he's gathered together.

So maybe he's aiming to do with cricket what David Storey did with professional rugby in The Changing Room: characterise very different men as they strive to find in sport the purpose and camaraderie that's so elusive in life. Indeed, the publicity for Headlong Theatre, which is touring The English Game, goes farther, suggesting that Bean is giving us a state-of-England play, meaning a play whose characters collectively symbolise the nation. But that's surely too great a claim for what seems a slight, if entertaining piece. Here are an elderly cove lugubriously resigned to his wife's frequent arrests as a radical activist, a GP who plans to relocate in France, an ageing rock star, a show-off thespian, a doleful plumber, a black man who works for the British Council and ... but, no, they aren't what I'd call a cross-section of our society.

The performances are as credible as the afternoon atmosphere, but only two characters make a strong impression. One is the captain, Tony Bell's Sean, who takes his cricketing Saturdays ultra-seriously and cannot give them up despite a hostile wife and what looks like an impending breakdown. The other is a newcomer to the team, Fred Ridgeway's Reg, who doesn't miss a chance to make a chauvinist or racist comment. The trouble is that, with his paeans to Enoch Powell (“What a brain!”), he's too obvious a hate figure. But then Bean's portrait of England also verges on disenchanted caricature. There's dog-poo on the grass. The pavilion has been burnt down by vandals. A passing yob snitches the players' cash while they're fielding. The aged veteran who once made a brilliant 143 not out dies while sleazy Reg triumphs at the crease. The other team are cheats. And the rain pours down as the players go to a pub called the Samuel Beckett.

Well, maybe cricket and England itself are a mix of Endgame and Godot. But I'd need more convincing than I get here.

Box office: 01483 440000, to Saturday, May 17. Then touring until June 28 www.headlongtheatre.co.uk

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