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Win a copy of 'An Island’s Eleven: The Story of Sri Lankan Cricket'

by Cricket World Thursday 30 June 2022

©CWM

An Island’s Eleven: The Story of Sri Lankan Cricket

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Win a copy of 'An Island’s Eleven: The Story of Sri Lankan Cricket' by Nicholas Brookes.

The first book to tell the remarkable full story of cricket in Sri Lanka With the possible exception of Clive Lloyd’s West Indies, no side has defied the odds so often as Sri Lanka.

To Nicholas Brookes’ mind, no other team’s cricket has carried such a strong national identity or rivalled Sri Lanka’s freewheeling invention and ingenuity. Yet, of the established nations, only Bangladesh has received less coverage.

From Sathasivam to Sangakkara, Murali to Malinga, Sri Lanka can lay claim to some of the world’s most remarkable cricketers – larger-than-life characters who thumbed convention and played the game their own way.

This is the land of pint-sized, swashbuckling batsmen, on-the-fly innovators and contorted, cryptic spinners. More so than anywhere else in the world, Sri Lankan cricket has an identity: cricket is Sri Lanka, and Sri Lanka is cricket.

We all know the story of the 1996 World Cup: how a team of unfancied amateurs rose from obscurity and changed the way the game was played. Yet the lore of Sri Lankan cricket stretches back much further, from early matches between colonists and locals, and Ashes-bound ships bringing in cricket’s biggest stars, to the more recent triumphs and tragedies that stem from cash flowing freely into the game.

An Island’s Eleven tells this story in full for the first time, focusing on the characters and moments that have shaped the game forever.

NICHOLAS BROOKES is an English writer, who has been based in Colombo since April 2018.

He has covered Sri Lankan cricket and its history for international publications including ESPN’s The Cricket Monthly and Wisden’s The Nightwatchman.

Usual Cricket World Competition rules apply.

Entries for this competition close on 1st August 2022 and the Prize Draw will take place on 2nd August 2022. Two lucky winners will recieve a A4 print from Art & Hue.