The Sports Bookshelf

West Indies fast bowling legend opens up to Richard Sydenham What he really thinks of ex-teammates and opponents Inside story of his battles with Steve Waugh The good and bad sides of Brian Lara Jon Culley Amid the debate over the rights or wrongs of the send-off salute that the West Indian cricketer Marlon Samuels gave England's Ben Stokes during the second Test match in Grenada, I noticed something that once would have caused jaws to drop in astonishment...a comment from Curtly Ambrose. The former fast bowler, one of the greats of West Indies cricket and the scourge of English batsmen for more than a decade after he was first unleashed upon them in 1988, famously observed what amounted to a vow of silence with the media for virtually his entire career. His steadfast refusal to offer a quotable comment, let alone grant interviews, became his trademark.  Requests, it is said, were politely declined and greeted with five words: 'Curtly talks to no man!' B

Given that it is seemingly impossible to keep him out of the news, it probably comes as no surprise that the shortlist for the 2015 Cricket Society and MCC Book of the Year Award contains two books about Kevin Pietersen. His own, highly controversial autobiography KP is one. The other is journalist Simon Wilde’s excellent and rather more balanced portrait, simply entitled: On Pietersen. Challenging those two titles for the £3,000 first prize will be Chris Waters, who is seeking to win the award for a second time with 10 for 10: Hedley Verity and the Story of Cricket's Greatest Bowling Feat.  The Yorkshire Post cricket writer won in 2012 with Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography. Were 10 for 10 to emerge as the judges' choice there would be echoes of the 1986 success enjoyed by Alan Hill with Hedley Verity: A Portrait of a Cricketer. Also on the shortlist are Christopher Sandford's poignant work The Final Over: The Cricketers of Summer 1914 , which looks at