This week's bestsellers in sports books

TODAY'S TOP TEN BEST-SELLING SPORTS BOOKS

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1 - Running with the Kenyans

Author: Adharanand Finn
Published by: Faber and Faber

Ever since the Mexico Olympics of 1968, when the athletes of Kenya claimed an unprecedented nine medals, the sporting world has been eager to learn the secrets that seemed to set the runners of one African nation apart from the rest, and turned the likes of Kipchoge Keino and Naftali Temu into legends of the track. Adharanand Finn, a freelance writer and running enthusiast, moved his family to Iten, a small high-altitude town in the Rift Valley that has become a mecca for long-distance runners. Finn ran side by side with Olympic champions and barefoot schoolchildren. This beautifully written book reveals what he learned about Kenya’s runners and their country.


 

2 - Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2012

Editor: Lawrence Booth
Published by: John Wisden & Co Ltd

First published in 1864 and probably the world’s most famous sports book, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack has been in the hands for the first time of Lawrence Booth, the Daily Mail and former Guardian cricket writer who is its 16th editor. The 149th edition contains everything its readers have come to expect -- coverage of every first-class game in every cricket nation, reports and scorecards for all Tests and ODIs, the Cricketers of the Year awards and some of the finest cricket writing, its trenchant tone set by the Notes by the Editor.

 

3 - Playfair Cricket Annual 2012

Editor: Ian Marshall
Published by: Headline

The classic pocket companion to the English cricket season, the 65th edition of Playfair reviews England's triumphant 2011 home Test series against Sri Lanka and India, as well as their matches against India and Pakistan on tour this winter. The book is packed with essential information to follow events on the field, with unrivalled up-to-the-minute statistical detail on all first-class players registered in the UK at the time of press, plus fixture lists for the coming season.


 

4 - Born to Run: The Hidden Tribe, the Ultra-Runners, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Author: Christopher McDougall
Published by: Profile Books

How an American former war correspondent with a love of running discovered a remote Mexican tribe, the Tarahumara, whose frugal, healthy diet was undermined somewhat by a love of grain alcohol but who achieved longevity through running extreme distances, barefoot, without the need for training schedules or recovery regimes. He finds them to be capable of running as fast and as far as the best prepared, most finely tuned marathon runners of the developed world and dreams of seeing them compete in the ‘greatest race’ of the title.

 

5 - The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership

Authors: Bill Walsh, Craig Walsh, Steve Jamison
Published by: Portfolio

A posthumous leadership guide by the acclaimed head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, this compendium of Bill Walsh's philosophy was compiled by his son and author Jamison from interviews and private notes. Interspersed with the coach–turned–leadership guru's insights into management are pieces by football greats, such as Joe Montana and Randy Cross, and former colleagues. The Walsh philosophy prizes people above all and focuses on core values, principles and ideals. Enlightening, informative and engaging, it has been hailed as a must-read for executives and managers at every level.

 

6 - A Life Without Limits

Author: Chrissie Wellington
Published by: Constable

Chrissie Wellington, a former civil servant and hobbyist jogger, a complex character whose insecurities as a young woman led her to develop eating disorders, ran her first marathon 10 years ago and surprised herself by completing the course in three hours and eight minutes. She tells a gripping and deeply human story of how ultimately she quit her job to train full time as a triathlete, became world champion within a year and is currently Ironman Triathlon world champion, the fastest on the planet for an event that comprises a 2.4-mile swim, an 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile marathon run.


 

7 - Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World

Author: Graham Hunter
Published by: BackPage Press

You might have thought that by now the full story of the world’s best football team must have been told but Spain-based British journalist Graham Hunter was so thorough in his research that he revealed things that even die-hard fans of the Blaugrana didn’t know. Hunter traces the story back from the 2011 Champions League final at Wembley to discover the people and events that played a part in the creation of a team that had its beginnings in the late 1980s, when Johan Cruyff was their coach, and offers some brilliant insights into the mind of their soon-to-be former coach, the extraordinary Pep Guardiola.


 

8 - Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike

Author: William Fotheringham
Published by: Yellow Jersey

It says something about Eddy Merckx that Lance Armstrong, who won the Tour de France a record seven times, amassed fewer than a hundred career victories compared with 445 by the obsessive Belgian in professional races alone. His career brought outstanding success but also personal tragedy, horrific injury and a doping controversy, and masked a surprising level of insecurity. William Fotheringham, the Guardian cycling writer, speaks to those who watched and knew Merckx to produce the definitive biography.


 

9 - Strong Woman: Ambition, Grit and a Great Pair of Heels

Author: Karren Brady
Published by: Collins

Karren Brady did not become Britain’s best-known businesswoman by being a pussycat and her autobiography reveals she had a hard-nosed streak even when she was a child. When she entered the world of work, it enabled her to form the partnership with David Sullivan that led her to become managing director of Birmingham City at the age of 23. Lord Sugar, with whom she worked on TV show The Apprentice says: ‘Karren’s story will be an inspiration to women everywhere.’


 

10 - The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods

Author: Hank Haney
Published by: Crown Archetypes

Hank Haney was swing coach to Tiger Woods for six years until their relationship broke down acrimoniously in 2010. During those years the supremely gifted golfer collected six major championships only to fall from grace over a series of scandals in his personal life. Haney had the chance to observe Woods in nearly every circumstance: at tournaments, on the practice range, over meals, with his wife, Elin, and relaxing with friends. This is his candid account of what he saw.


As listed by amazon.co.uk on April 30, 2012

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Who's Who back to its trivial best

SPORTS BOOK OF THE WEEK

The Cricketers' Who's Who 2012, edited by Jo Harman

Published by: Pitch Publishing on behalf of All Out Cricket

What's it about?

As those who would damage the beloved County Championship know all too well, if there is one thing to which cricket followers do not take kindly it is change, in particular unnecessary change.

Outrage, therefore, greeted the 2011 edition of the Cricketers' Who's Who, which is not an institution of Wisden magnitude but has nonetheless been around now for 33 years.

Consternation arose largely from the disappearance of the personal information and opinions that added colour to the player profiles and gave the Who's Who its unique selling point.  This was forced in part by circumstance, with a change of publisher during the close season disrupting the normal process of gathering in forms filled in by the players themselves.

These gems of trivia were replaced for each player by 'an objective view of their skills and characters' in the words of the Pitch Publishing editorial team.

Happily, fears that the more earnest, worthy tone was the shape of things to come have been allayed.  The 2012 edition has been restored, more or less, to its former glory.

'We invited comment, we listened to it, we weighed it up, and we have reacted," wrote the editor, Jo Harman, in his introductory notes.

There has been a reaction, too, to complaints from some players about false information appearing in past Who's Who editions, sometimes to their embarrassment.  The paper forms players used to complete -- and which, inevitably, would be prime vehicles for dressing room mischief -- have given way to online surveys.

Hence we can hope that Jonathan Batty's assertion that he would be prime minister if he were not a cricketer is no less honest than Gareth Cross's that he would be a binman.  And that Will Bragg's preferred reading is the Financial Times and James Taylor's favourite band is the Pussycat Dolls.

The editor adds a warning for cricket writers looking for a line on a slow day, however. "As with Wikipedia, approach with care..."

The Editor

Jo Harman, former sports journalist at BSkyB, is web editor for the Professional Cricketers' Association's partner magazine All Out Cricket.

Buy The Cricketers' Who's Who 2012 direct from amazon.co.uk

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Six of the best - the shortlisted contenders for Football Book of the Year

BRITISH SPORTS BOOK AWARDS

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1 -- A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke

Author: Ronald Reng
Published by: Yellow Jersey

One evening in November 2009, the German national goalkeeper, Robert Enke, parked his car near a level crossing in the German state of Lower Saxony and stepped in front of a 100mph train. He was 32. Writer Ronald Reng tells the story of a man who had also been his friend, revealing much about the fears that torment many at the highest level of sport, concealed often behind a veneer of false confidence. In heartfelt but never sentimental words, Reng describes the tragedy of a talented man cracking under the strain of personal loss and professional pressures. Winner: William Hill Sports Book of the Year, 2011.

2 -- Got, Not Got: The A-Z of Lost Football Culture, Treasures and Pleasures

Authors:  Derek Hammond & Gary Silke
Published by: Pitch Publishing

Football fans have always been collectors, filling sticker books with images of their favourite players or hoarding programmes as souvenirs of matches they have attended. As a result, there is a huge volume of football memorabilia to feed the game's appetite for nostalgia.  Authors Gary Silke and Derek Hammond assembled a huge collection of ephemera, mainly from the 60s, 70s and 80s, and wove around it a charming historical snapshot of what now seems like an innocent age, when football belonged to the people, rather than to television moguls, millionaires and oligarchs.

3 -- I'm Not Really Here: A Life of Two Halves

Author: Paul Lake
Published by: Century

Paul Lake might have been the finest player of his generation had a cruciate ligament injury not struck him down just as his career was about to blossom.  Captain of Manchester City at 21, he was tipped as a future captain of England, equally commanding in midfield or defence.  But his treatment programme was a disaster, marked by misdiagnoses, critical delays, false hopes, multiple operations and poor aftercare.   Lake retired in 1996.  Written with the help of his wife, Joanne, this is the poignant story of his slide into depression and despair and, upliftingly, of his recovery.

4 -- The Management: Scotland's Great Football Bosses

Authors: Michael Grant & Rob Robertson
Published by: Birlinn

Think great Scottish football managers and the names of Jock Stein, Walter Smith and Sir Alex Ferguson will be among those that come to mind. Not, probably, Charlie Miller, John Lawson, John Harley, William Maxwell, Willie Chalmers or John Madden. Yet these men were equally influential in their way, as missionaries and pioneers of the game, particularly in South America and Europe in particular. In Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, Belgium, Sweden, even Italy, Scottish managers left their mark.  Extensively researched, this is their fascinating story.

5 -- The Smell of Football

Author: Mick Rathbone
Published by: Vision Sports Publishing

Mick Rathbone, one time Birmingham and Blackburn player, one time Head of Medicine at Everton, has seen football from different sides, first as a starstruck apprentice at his home town club, so undermined by self-doubt he found himself too petrified to pass the ball to his boyhood idol, later as a respected professional, briefly as a manager and then as a Premier League physio. This is a touching and funny memoir of a love-hate relationship with football spanning 35 years, recalled with the help of the sounds and smells and the characters that have left their lasting impressions and shaped his perceptions of the game.

6 -- There's a Golden Sky: How twenty years of the Premier League has changed football forever

Author: Ian Ridley
Published by: Bloomsbury

Two decades after he painted a portrait of football at perhaps its lowest ebb in Season in the Cold, football journalist and author Ian Ridley retraces the steps of that journey to take the temperature of England's national game after 20 years of the Premier League.  Mingling among the princes and the paupers of the game, from the multi-millionaires who run football and now play it too at the highest level to the amateurs and non-League clubs for whom the riches generated by television have had little or no effect, Ridley chronicles how the game has changed and asks whether it has really done so for the better.


Browse more football books at The Sports Bookshelf Shop

The British Sports Book Awards shortlists in full

Spotlight on the contenders for Racing Book of the Year
Shortlisted titles for Cricket Book of the Year

Coming soon:  The Sports Bookshelf's guide to the nominated titles in the Golf Book of the Year category.


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This week's bestsellers in sports books

TODAY'S TOP TEN BEST-SELLING SPORTS BOOKS

Click on a title or illustration to BUY

1 - Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2012

Editor: Lawrence Booth
Published by: John Wisden & Co Ltd

 First published in 1864 and probably the world’s most famous sports book, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack has been in the hands for the first time of Lawrence Booth, the Daily Mail and former Guardian cricket writer who is its 16th editor. The 149th edition contains everything its readers have come to expect -- coverage of every first-class game in every cricket nation, reports and scorecards for all Tests and ODIs, the Cricketers of the Year awards and some of the finest cricket writing, its trenchant tone set by the Notes by the Editor.

2 - Running with the Kenyans

Author: Adharanand Finn
Published by: Faber and Faber

Ever since the Mexico Olympics of 1968, when the athletes of Kenya claimed an unprecedented nine medals, the sporting world has been eager to learn the secrets that seemed to set the runners of one African nation apart from the rest, and turned the likes of Kipchoge Keino and Naftali Temu into legends of the track. Adharanand Finn, a freelance writer and running enthusiast, moved his family to Iten, a small high-altitude town in the Rift Valley that has become a mecca for long-distance runners. Finn ran side by side with Olympic champions and barefoot schoolchildren. This beautifully written book reveals what he learned about Kenya’s runners and their country.

3 - Playfair Cricket Annual 2012

Editor: Ian Marshall
Published by: Headline

The classic pocket companion to the English cricket season, the 65th edition of Playfair reviews England's triumphant 2011 home Test series against Sri Lanka and India, as well as their matches against India and Pakistan on tour this winter. The book is packed with essential information to follow events on the field, with unrivalled up-to-the-minute statistical detail on all first-class players registered in the UK at the time of press, plus fixture lists for the coming season.

4 - Born to Run: The Hidden Tribe, the Ultra-Runners, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Author: Christopher McDougall
Published by: Profile Books

How an American former war correspondent with a love of running discovered a remote Mexican tribe, the Tarahumara, whose frugal, healthy diet was undermined somewhat by a love of grain alcohol but who achieved longevity through running extreme distances, barefoot, without the need for training schedules or recovery regimes. He finds them to be capable of running as fast and as far as the best prepared, most finely tuned marathon runners of the developed world and dreams of seeing them compete in the ‘greatest race’ of the title.

5 - Marathon Running: From Beginning to Elite

Author: Richard Nerurkar
Published by:  A & C Black Ltd

Richard Nerurkar was Great Britain's most successful marathon runner of the 1990s. He has seen it, done it and got the medals to prove it. His insight offers to guide the novice from the end of the street to the 26.2-mile finish line and to help the elite club runner find those extra few seconds that will achieve a new personal best. As well as providing structured training schedules to follow, Nerurkar shares his own experiences with the reader to help you on your way no matter what your standard. Every practical tip has been tried and tested so you can be sure that, despite the pain and suffering, they work.

6 - Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice

Author: Matthew Syed
Published by: Fourth Estate

Matthew Syed, Times sports writer and former international table-tennis champion (after many hours of practice) explores the true nature of talent and attempts to reveal what really makes a champion, debunking the myths that we can be born brilliant and that genetic make-up and social background matter. World record triple jumper Jonathan Edwards says: 'Intellectually stimulating and hugely enjoyable at a stroke… challenged some of my most cherished beliefs about life and success.’

7 - The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods

Author: Hank Haney
Published by: Crown Archetypes

Hank Haney was swing coach to Tiger Woods for six years until their relationship broke down acrimoniously in 2010. During those years the supremely gifted golfer collected six major championships only to fall from grace over a series of scandals in his personal life. Haney had the chance to observe Woods in nearly every circumstance: at tournaments, on the practice range, over meals, with his wife, Elin, and relaxing with friends. This is his candid account of what he saw.

8 - Strong Woman: Ambition, Grit and a Great Pair of Heels

Author: Karren Brady
Published by: Collins

Karren Brady did not become Britain’s best-known businesswoman by being a pussycat and her autobiography reveals she had a hard-nosed streak even when she was a child. When she entered the world of work, it enabled her to form the partnership with David Sullivan that led her to become managing director of Birmingham City at the age of 23. Lord Sugar, with whom she worked on TV show The Apprentice says: ‘Karren’s story will be an inspiration to women everywhere.’

9 - Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike

Author: William Fotheringham
Published by: Yellow Jersey

It says something about Eddy Merckx that Lance Armstrong, who won the Tour de France a record seven times, amassed fewer than a hundred career victories compared with 445 by the obsessive Belgian in professional races alone. His career brought outstanding success but also personal tragedy, horrific injury and a doping controversy, and masked a surprising level of insecurity. William Fotheringham, the Guardian cycling writer, speaks to those who watched and knew Merckx to produce the definitive biography.

10 - Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World

Author: Graham Hunter
Published by: BackPage Press

You might have thought that by now the full story of the world’s best football team must have been told but Spain-based British journalist Graham Hunter was so thorough in his research that he revealed things that even die-hard fans of the Blaugrana didn’t know. Hunter traces the Barcelona story back from the 2011 Champions League final at Wembley to discover the people and events that played a part in the creation of a team that had its beginnings in the late 1980s, when Johan Cruyff was their coach, and offers some brilliant insights into the mind of the current coach, the extraordinary Pep Guardiola.


As listed by amazon.co.uk on April 23, 2012

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From the heroically virtuous to the tearfully metrosexual - the changing face of manliness and Yorkshire cricket

SPORTS BOOK OF THE WEEK

We'll Get 'Em in Sequins, by Max Davidson

Published by: Wisden Sports Writing

What's it about?

In short, it is the story of the evolution of manliness and masculinity written by an author with a fascination for bravery and chivalry in sport and an astute observer of human behaviour.

What counts as manliness is, of course, quite subjective and author Max Davidson is open-minded enough to accept all manner of interpretations of what makes a man.  But when he watched Darren Gough, a fast bowler with the heart of a lion, wearing make-up and spangled tops to win Strictly Come Dancing, sharing a stage with "gay prima donnas, weeping women and superannuated comedians" and saw an England cricket captain, Michael Vaughan, break down in tears as he announced his resignation, he clearly felt that conventions were being challenged enough to start asking a few probing questions.

What Gough and Vaughan had in common is that they are both Yorkshiremen, albeit an adopted one in Vaughan's case. Davidson had always supposed Yorkshire to be the heartland of manliness and Yorkshire cricketers its most upstanding ambassadors.  If their behaviour did not cast doubt upon this notion, perhaps it was time to redefine it.

It inspired Davidson to set his examination of manliness within the framework of Yorkshire cricket, building what he describes as "as much a social history as a cricket book" around portraits of seven Yorkshire players, beginning at the turn of the last century with George Hirst, a man admired for his Edwardian virtues and for visiting his mother, every Sunday, and ending with Vaughan, who not only revealed a painfully human face as he relinquished the captaincy, but had also left a cricket match early and unapologetically to attend the birth of a child.

In between, to accompany him on his journey, Davidson chose Herbert Sutcliffe, who sprinkled cologne on his flannels and brilliantined his hair, followed by the war hero Hedley Verity and the contradictory Fred Trueman -- "the blunt Yorkshireman...who could drink for England" but who would emerge standing from marathon sessions at the bar by hiding near-full pint pots behind handy curtains.

Then came Geoffrey Boycott, another who spoke his mind but who also had an unusual faith in star signs and horoscopes and who at least once visited a medium, and Gough, a fast bowler almost as broad in the beam as Trueman but who worried about his pointy ears as a boy and, finally bedecked in the sequins of the title, uttered the once unthinkable assertion, the mantra of metrosexuality, that he was "comfortable with my sexuality...in touch with my feminine side."

Legend has it that, at the critical stage of the last Ashes Test of 1901, with 15 needed to win and one wicket standing, that Hirst conferred with his partner, Wilfred Rhodes, and told him: "We'll get 'em in singles".

Some reviewers have suggested that Davidson's title is a play on words that doesn't work, or at least does not so justice to the book.  Irrespective of that,  the author makes his arguments well and does so with elegance and humour.

Who is the author?

Max Davidson is a prolific journalist, a regular in the pages of the Daily Telegraph, as well as a seasoned traveller who spent part of his childhood in Africa and makes an annual food pilgrimage to Venice every October. He is the author of six comic novels as well as books about sporting courage and chivalry. Although not a Yorkshireman himself, he had a Yorkshire grandfather and has a lifelong love affair with cricket that led him to join the MCC when he was 16.

Order We'll Get 'Em in Sequins: Manliness, Yorkshire Cricket and the Century That Changed Everything direct from amazon.co.uk

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Five titles bidding to bowl over judges to be Cricket Book of the Year

BRITISH SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2012

1 - Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography

Author: Chris Waters
Published by: Aurum Press

The first full biography of one of England’s greatest cricketers, this balanced yet unflinching portrait of Fred Trueman draws on dozens of new interviews with his fellow players, broadcasters, family and friends.  Cricket journalist Chris Waters delves into the bleak upbringing the Yorkshire fast bowler left behind, separates myth from reality and explores the factors that influenced the character of a man who presented himself as a bluff, confrontational, almost stereotypical Yorkshireman yet who concealed a much more vulnerable and insecure side that few knew.

2 - Ian Botham: The Power and the Glory

Author: Simon Wilde
Published by: Simon & Schuster

Sir Ian Botham in a way has become the modern Fred Trueman, the curmudgeon of the Sky Sports cricket crew, occupying the niche that Trueman made his in the Test Match Special team.  Younger viewers recognise his iconic status but perhaps need reminding how he earned it. Cricket writer Simon Wilde's exhaustively researched, sensitively written and deliberately non-judgmental biography does the job, giving Botham full credit for his brilliance as a player, particularly in the early years of exuberance and joyful cricket, before the distractions of celebrity took their toll.

3 - Jack Hobbs: England's Greatest Cricketer

Author: Leo McKinstry
Published by:  Yellow Jersey

Cricket's appreciation of history tends to preserve the memory and reputation of its greats and yet time has done an injustice to Jack Hobbs, who remains the most prolific runscorer of all time even 78 years after he retired but somehow tends to be recalled less readily than Hammond, Hutton, Bradman and Grace, even though he was the first professional cricketer to be knighted.  McKinstry, a heavyweight among biographers with acclaimed works on Sir Alf Ramsey, Geoff Boycott and the Charlton brothers on his CV, seeks to put this right in a sweeping study that captures the spirit of a decent man from humble origins and of the times in which he lived.

4 - The Breaks are Off - My Autobiography

Author: Graeme Swann
Published by: Hodder & Stoughton

Somewhere behind the cheeky grin, the wisecracks and the witty Tweets that are their online companions lies a deeper, more profound and probably even a vulnerable Graeme Swann. But it isn't showing itself yet and why should it? Swann is a terrific off-spinner but he likes to have a laugh, likes to have fun and as such is a throwback to the days when every cricket dressing room was home to several of that disposition, before the technicians and the analysts and the nutritionists took over.  So he tells his story in those terms, charting the ups and downs and the enjoyable diversions he has encountered along the way with an engaging honesty and an agreeable sense of humour.

5 - Tony Greig: A Reappraisal of English Cricket's Most Controversial Captain

Author:  David Tossell
Published by: Pitch Publishing

At his peak, Tony Greig enjoyed no little popularity as a cricketer, not least because he was a fearsome competitor and a winner who restored England's pride as Test captain, yet as a South African with an unashamedly aggressive approach, in word and deed, he was never wholly accepted by the game's traditionalists.  So when, in 1977, it emerged that he was recruiting for Kerry Packer's breakaway World Series Cricket it was hardly a surprise that he fell from grace. David Tossell's reappraisal asks thought-provoking questions over whether Greig's worth as a cricketer will ever be fully appreciated.

Further reading: Two prestige awards already for Chris Waters and Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography

Browse more cricket books at The Sports Bookshelf Shop

The British Sports Book Awards shortlists in full

Spotlight on the contenders for Racing Book of the Year

Coming soon:  The Sports Bookshelf's guide to the nominated titles in the Football Book of the Year category.


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Second award for Waters as MCC and Cricket Society give Trueman biography their vote

Chris Waters has completed a unique awards double with his widely praised book Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography.


Having been named as Wisden Book of the Year 2012 only days ago, the painstakingly researched and thoughtfully written study of the great Yorkshire and England fast bowler and the man behind the myth has also won The Cricket Society and MCC Book of the Year for 2012.

It is the first time both awards have gone to the same title.  There might be more honours to come yet for Waters, cricket correspondent of the Yorkshire Post -- the book is shortlisted for both ‘Cricket Book of the Year’ and ‘New Writer of the Year’ at the British Sports Book Awards 2012, the winners of which will be announced next month.

The book was selected from an MCC-Cricket Society shortlist that also included F.R.Foster: The Fields Were Sudden Bare, by Robert Brooke (ACS Publications), Before the Lights Went Out: The 1912 Triangular Tournament, by Patrick Ferriday (Von Krumm Publishing), Half of the Human Race, by Anthony Quinn (Jonathan Cape) and Australia - Story of a Cricket Country, by Christian Ryan (Hardie Grant Books).

(Thanks to the Cricket Society)

For Waters, quietly spoken but forthright in his opinions, the awards are due recognition of his talent as a writer.  Yet the work that has earned him high acclaim among his contemporaries and beyond was not one that he had imagined himself undertaking.

An unassuming individual, he had no plans to write a book about Trueman or any other subject until the popular and prolific cricket writer, Gideon Haigh, aware that publishers Aurum Press were interested in a project with a strong Yorkshire theme, put forward his name.

Once he had agreed to the commission, however, Waters set about completing it with diligence and thoroughness, sensitively approaching members of the families involved and speaking to as many of Trueman's colleagues, friends and acquaintances as he could track down, in order to produce a balanced and honest biography that would identify truth and dismantle myth, so that readers would feel their understanding of the subject had been enhanced.

Aurum are releasing a paperback version edition in June, which will need to be in large format if it is to accommodate even a fraction of the glowing reviews attracted by the hardback.

Leo McKinstry, the author and Mail on Sunday columnist whose own study of Jack Hobbs will be judged alongside Waters's Trueman book at the 2012 British Sports Book Awards, described it as "one of the finest sports books of recent years: well-researched, highly readable and packed with anecdotes."

Writing in The Guardian, distinguished author and journalist Frank Keating said: "Chris Waters deserves extremely high marks for his welcome, authentically honest new biography."

Robert Low, in The Oldie, said that "one of the many virtues of Chris Waters's thoughtful and painstakingly researched biography is that he examines the Trueman myths and dismantles most of them, but leaves a vivid portrait of a complex and contradictory character who was at heart surprisingly insecure."

Order Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography from amazon.co.uk

Further reading: Acclaimed Biography wins Wisden Book of Year Award

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Acclaimed Biography of Fred Trueman wins prestigious Wisden Book of the Year

The 2012 Wisden Book of the Year Award has been won by Chris Waters for his superb biography of Fred Trueman.

Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography, published by Aurum Press, was released last October to glowing reviews.

Author and Mail on Sunday columnist Leo McKinstry, regarded himself as an oustanding sports biographer, described it as “one of the finest sports books of recent years”, while the distinguished veteran journalist and cricket author David Foot called it a “brilliant and unsparing portrait”.

The winner was chosen by Harry Pearson, the columnist and author, whose book Slipless in Settle last year won the MCC-Cricket Society Book of the Year Award for which Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography is also a contender. The winner of the 2012 award is due to be announced this evening.

The book, Waters’s first and a project he undertook with painstaking thoroughness, has also been short-listed for Cricket Book of the Year at the British Sports Book Awards, to be announced next month.

Chris Waters, the cricket correspondent of the Yorkshire Post, was kind enough to talk to The Sports Bookshelf about the book as he was completing the manuscript last year. Read the full, fascinating interview...

Past Winners of Wisden Book of the Year

Since 2003, the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack has named a Book of the Year, selected by their guest book reviewer, representing a personal view of the best new cricket book seen during the year.

Past winners have been:

2011 -- The Cricketer’s Progress: Meadowland to Mumbai, by Eric Midwinter
2010 -- Harold Larwood: The Authorised Biography of the World’s Fastest Bowler, by Duncan Hamilton
2009 -- Sweet Summers: The Classic Cricket Writing of J. M. Kilburn, edited by Duncan Hamilton
2008 -- Tom Cartwright: The Flame Still Burns, by Stephen Chalke
2007 -- Brim Full of Passion, by Wasim Khan
2006 -- Ashes 2005, by Gideon Haigh
2005 -- On and Off the Field, by Ed Smith
2004 -- No Coward Soul, by Stephen Chalke and Derek Hodgson
2003 -- Bodyline Autopsy, by David Frith

Buy Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography direct from amazon.co.uk

See the full shortlist for the British Sports Book Awards 2012

Browse more cricket books at The Sports Bookshelf Shop

Coming soon: spotlight on all the contenders for Cricket Book of the Year.

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This week's bestsellers in sports books

TODAY'S TOP TEN BEST-SELLING SPORTS BOOKS

1 - Playfair Cricket Annual 2012

Editor: Ian Marshall
Published by: Headline

The classic pocket companion to the English cricket season, the 65th edition of Playfair reviews England's triumphant 2011 home Test series against Sri Lanka and India, as well as their matches against India and Pakistan on tour this winter. The book is packed with essential information to follow events on the field, with unrivalled up-to-the-minute statistical detail on all first-class players registered in the UK at the time of press, plus fixture lists for the coming season.

2 - Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2012

Editor: Lawrence Booth
Published by: John Wisden & Co Ltd

First published in 1864 and probably the world’s most famous sports book, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack has been in the hands for the first time of Lawrence Booth, the Daily Mail and former Guardian cricket writer who is its 16th editor.  The 149th edition contains everything its readers have come to expect -- coverage of every first-class game in every cricket nation, reports and scorecards for all Tests and ODIs, the Cricketers of the Year awards and some of the finest cricket writing, its trenchant tone set by the Notes by the Editor.

3 - The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods

Author: Hank Haney
Published by: Crown Archetypes

Hank Haney was swing coach to Tiger Woods for six years until their relationship broke down acrimoniously in 2010.  During those years the supremely gifted golfer collected six major championships only to fall from grace over a series of scandals in his personal life.  Haney had the chance to observe Woods in nearly every circumstance: at tournaments, on the practice range, over meals, with his wife, Elin, and relaxing with friends.  This is his candid account of what he saw.

4 - Born to Run: The Hidden Tribe, the Ultra-Runners, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Author: Christopher McDougall
Published by: Profile Books

How an American former war correspondent with a love of running discovered a remote Mexican tribe, the Tarahumara, whose frugal, healthy diet was undermined somewhat by a love of grain alcohol but who achieved longevity through running extreme distances, barefoot, without the need for training schedules or recovery regimes.  He finds them to be capable of running as fast and as far as the best prepared, most finely tuned marathon runners of the developed world and dreams of seeing them compete in the ‘greatest race’ of the title.

5 - A Life Without Limits

Author: Chrissie Wellington
Published by: Constable

Chrissie Wellington, a former civil servant and hobbyist jogger, a complex character whose insecurities as a young woman led her to develop eating disorders, ran her first marathon 10 years ago and surprised herself by completing the course in three hours and eight minutes.  She tells a gripping and deeply human story of how ultimately she quit her job to train full time as a triathlete, became world champion within a year and is currently Ironman Triathlon world champion, the fastest on the planet for an event that comprises a 2.4-mile swim, an 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile marathon run.

6 - The Big Fight: My Story

Author: Sugar Ray Leonard
Published by: Ebury Press

Eight-times world boxing champion Sugar Ray Leonard may have been almost peerless in the ring, losing only three of his 40 professional fights as he saw off the challenges of Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns and Marvin Hagler among others. But a troubled life outside the ropes that saw him sexually abused as a child led ultimately into the dark roads of drink and drug addiction and the biggest of all his big fights.  This is the story of his rise, fall and redemption.

7 - Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike

Author: William Fotheringham
Published by: Yellow Jersey

It says something about Eddy Merckx that Lance Armstrong, who won the Tour de France a record seven times, amassed fewer than a hundred career victories compared with 445 by the obsessive Belgian in professional races alone. His career brought outstanding success but also personal tragedy, horrific injury and a doping controversy, and masked a surprising level of insecurity. William Fotheringham, the Guardian cycling writer, speaks to those who watched and knew Merckx to produce the definitive biography.

8 - Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World

Author: Graham Hunter
Published by: Back Page Press

You might have thought that by now the full story of the world’s best football team must have been told but Spain-based British journalist Graham Hunter was so thorough in his research that he revealed things that even die-hard fans of the Blaugrana didn’t know. Hunter traces the story back from the 2011 Champions League final at Wembley to discover the people and events that played a part in the creation of a team that had its beginnings in the late 1980s, when Johan Cruyff was their coach, and offers some brilliant insights into the mind of the current coach, the extraordinary Pep Guardiola.

9 - Running with the Kenyans

Author:  Adharanand Finn
Published by:  Faber and Faber

Ever since the Mexico Olympics of 1968, when the athletes of Kenya claimed an unprecedented nine medals, the sporting world has been eager to learn the secrets that seemed to set the runners of one African nation apart from the rest, and turned the likes of Kipchoge Keino and Naftali Temu into legends of the track.  Adharanand Finn, a freelance writer and running enthusiast, moved his family to Iten, a small high-altitude town in the Rift Valley that has become a mecca for long-distance runners. Finn ran side by side with Olympic champions and barefoot schoolchildren.  This beautifully written book reveals what he learned about Kenya’s runners and their country.

10 - Strong Woman: Ambition, Grit and a Great Pair of Heels

Author: Karren Brady
Published by: Collins

Karren Brady did not become Britain’s best-known businesswoman by being a pussycat and her autobiography reveals she had a hard-nosed streak even when she was a child.  When she entered the world of work, it enabled her to form the partnership with David Sullivan that led her to become managing director of Birmingham City at the age of 23. Lord Sugar, with whom she worked on TV show The Apprentice says: ‘Karren’s story will be an inspiration to women everywhere.’

As listed by amazon.co.uk on April 16, 2012

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