The Ekamra Sports Literature Festival (ESLF) is preparing for a major step. After six years as Asia’s leading sports literature awards, the festival will go global in 2026. Festival Director Sundeep Misra announced the expansion on November 22 in New Delhi. He said the awards will now recognise international sports writers for their work.
This year’s top honour, the ESLF Sports Book of the Year 2025, went to Bring It On by Deepa Malik and Soni Sangwan. The Diary of a Cricketer’s Wife by Puja Pujara and Namita Kala won the Biography of the Year award.
ESLF announces expansion and honours top sports books of 2025
Other major winners were also announced. The One, Cricket, My Life and More by Shikhar Dhawan, Chandresh Narayan, and Namita Kala won Autobiography of the Year. Fearless by Mohinder Amarnath and Rajinder Amarnath won Cricket Book of the Year. Sacred Grounds: A Journey Through People’s Football in India received the Special Jury Award. HarperCollins was named Publisher of the Year.
The 7th season of ESLF took place on Saturday at Delhi’s Bikaner House. The event included a special panel with Olympic gold medallist and high jump world record holder Javier Sotomayor. India’s national record holder Tejaswin Shankar also joined the discussion. The two spoke about Sotomayor’s record jump of 2.45m, which has stood for 32 years.
Sotomayor shared insights from his career. He said, “I think what helped me was an athlete in the era of High Jump, when there was very high quality of High jumpers in the world and I learned a lot from them and also a lot of my predecessors whom I observed a lot and that is one advice I will tell others as well, you have to be very dedicated, focused and disciplined and always aiming to do what he did last year, better this year.”
The festival also hosted cricket writer and filmmaker Jarrod Kimber. He spoke about his book The Art of Batting, which studies the skills, science, and strategies of 50 top cricketers. He said, “You can’t be an Rahul Dravid in this era, you have to be whatever your era allows you to be as a lot has changed post his retirement especially with involvement and inclusion of DRS and Review system.”
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The event featured many other authors and athletes, including Italian writer Franco Nugnes, Palestinian runner Mohammed Dwedar, and India’s first female Paralympic medallist Deepa Malik.
