Out of the Ashes: The Remarkable Rise and Rise of the Afghanistan Cricket Team

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Cool Runnings meets Joseph O'Neill's Netherland in an inspiring and feel-good story of bravery and sporting success from a country so widely known for war and extremism. This is the true story of the Afghanistan cricket team and their extraordinary attempt to join the world's elite cricketing nations. That this devastated nation should be able to field a cricket team at all, let alone one as successful as this, is an unbelievable achievement. Seven years ago, in a country which does not have a real cricket pitch even today, there was no national team. But a group of young Afghan men, exiled by war, learnt to play in the smashed concrete of refugee camps, and have risen from obscurity to the groomed grass pitches of international cricket. With unlimited access, Tim Albone traveled alongside the team for the two years, charting the players' progress from refugees in Pakistan to the brink of international sporting stardom. Far from being bogged down in cricket jargon, this tale of a gang of dedicated, charismatic, occasionally exasperating young men seeking triumph out of disaster is one that will move and inspire everyone. Foreword by Mike Atherton.

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Tim Albone is the former Times and Sunday Times correspondent in Afghanistan. In 2008 he was shortlisted for the Bayeux-Calvados War Correspondent Award.