Eleven

'A book that is about vulnerability, failure, chance, fate, the nature of memory, and the fleeting moments that start like any other day but become sliding doors that close behind you with a chilling finality...in its imaginative scope, its daring, its ambition and its skill, it stands apart' Jon Hotten, Wisden Cricket Monthly

'A profound work...in Ryan's hands, cricket becomes a vehicle to explore moments of extreme vulnerability, fading memories, suppressed grief...A world of T20 will not produce books like this. Cherish it while you can' David Hopps, The Cricketer

Watk. Raja. Jane (i). Shirvan. Cricket - the way it brings emotion and life and pain and memory and regret all hauntingly and combustively to light. John. Jane (iii). Shivalkar. Men and women whose destinies don't make sense, scattered across eras and continents, their stories a miraculous tapestry of near misses, strange turns and quiet, unglamorous devotion. Frank. RR. Vowles. Carmino.

From the freakish minute that might have prevented the slow decline of West Indies cricket to the jazz trombonist blocked from the England side, Christian Ryan, award-winning author of Golden Boy, reconstructs forgotten, fragile moments with breathtaking care.

The result is a wildly ambitious, compulsively readable exploration of the strange, luminous ways cricket shapes a life, sizzling with humour and verve and tragedy.