Fire in Babylon

<p><b>WINNER OF THE CRICKET SOCIETY AND MCC BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2016</b><br><br><b>SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD</b><br><br><b>'I doubt there will be a better book written about this period in West Indies cricket history.' <br>Clive Lloyd</b><br><br><i>Cricket had never been played like this. Cricket had never meant so much.</i> <br><br>The West Indies had always had brilliant cricketers; it hadn&#146;t always had brilliant cricket teams. But in 1974 a man called Clive Lloyd began to lead a side which would at last throw off the shackles that had hindered the region for centuries. Nowhere else had a game been so closely connected to a people&#146;s past and their future hopes; nowhere else did cricket liberate a people like it did in the Caribbean.<br><br>For almost two decades Clive Lloyd and then Vivian Richards led the batsmen and bowlers who changed the way cricket was played and changed the way a whole nation &#150; which existed only on a cricket pitch - saw itself. <br><br>With their pace like fire and their scorching batting these sons of cane-cutters and fishermen brought pride to a people which had been stifled by 300 years of slavery empire and colonialism. Their cricket roused the Caribbean and antagonised the game&#146;s traditionalists. <br><br>Told by the men who made it happen and the people who watched it unfold <i>Fire in Babylon</i> is the definitive story of the greatest team that sport has known.</p>