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LONDON, Thursday - Sri Lanka's star batsman Aravinda de Silva launches his autobiography at Lord's tomorrow.

The launching will coincide with Sri Lanka's opening World Cup match against England.

The book titled: ``Aravinda: The Autobiography'', is a brilliant account of this master batsman's life and times, following his story literally from the cradle to the present day.

The foreward of the book is written by Ian Chappell, the former Australian captain.

About the book: ``Aravinda was given a bat to hold at an early age, ``for a long time the hook shot was the only one I knew'', and the book charts his growth to become one of the world's most dynamic batsmen. He has more than the cross-bats now of course, and the book is exemplary in revealing the thought processes, desire, drive and determination that go into making a world-class batsman.

``Having made his debut at Lord's in 1984, Aravinda's story is the story of Sri Lankan cricket too, for he has played in almost all of Sri Lanka's Tests and one-day internationals since they gained full international status in 1982. He has faced every great bowler in the world in this time, succeeding against them, and his accounts of his titanic tussles with bowlers such as Imran, Qadir, Wasim, Waqar, Hadlee, Warne, McGrath, Hughes, McDermott, Kumble, Holding, Walsh and Ambrose make for fascinating reading.

``The book is also studded with vivid portraits of all the great batsmen he played with and against. Batsmen are made not born, he seems to suggest. What distinguishes the ones who are at the top is their hunger to win and play at their best when under the most immense pressure. To Aravinda, who has had all the shots and the desire to play them from a very early age, greatness has come from taking on the responsibility of being Sri Lanka's major match-winning batsman.

``The best measure of success: playing to the needs of the team. The team is what matters...once the Sri Lankan team became better, so did I. Once I became better, so did the team. That's the secret of our current success.''

It is a mark of the man that he is as content to revel in the skill of his opponents as he is to recount his triumphs against them. All his team-mates too, past and present are remembered, none are forgotten in the part they played in moving Sri Lanka towards being the current World Champions.

``Of course the road to this goal was fraught with many disappointments, and for many years to the rest of the world Sri Lanka ``seemed to be a collection of the unpronounceable doing the unremarkable''. They have come a very long way in a very short space of time, it is almost as if they had to suffer for so long in order to fire themselves to be such great competitors. Like his cricket, Aravinda's book reveals knowledge brought to life.

``It is perhaps symptomatic of the poor light in which Sri Lanka was viewed that for all the excellent action pictures in the book, there are none of Aravinda for the years from his debut in 1984 to 1995/96 when he had that glorious season for Kent and that season's World Cup. Since then of course, Aravinda and Sri Lankan cricket have been in the news aplenty. Everything they do is headline news. And this exceptional book, written in an manner that takes one into the heart of the game and what it means to be a Sri Lankan cricketer, stands fit to be seen as one of the best-received cricketing autobiographies of recent times''.

It is published by Mainstream Press, UK and priced at 16.99 pounds sterling (approx. SLR 1900/-).