The Sports Bookshelf

Last year, it was the harrowing story of crippled rugby player Matt Hampson Engage! that attracted the strongest approval among sports book fans participating in an online poll; in 2011 it was Anthony Clavane's Promised Land, a beautifully crafted history of a football team, a city and a culture. Pictures from the awards evening at Lord's So which of nine category winners from the 2013 British Sports Book Awards will emerge as overall Times Sports Book of the Year when voting closes at midnight on June 7? The accolade is one that readers themselves can determine, rather than a panel of judges, by linking to this page and nominating which of the titles honoured at this week's awards ceremony at Lord's Cricket Ground they think deserves to be granted the highest recognition. These are the nine category winners who make up the list to be put to an online public vote , with links to selected reviews. Best new writer - Adharanand Finn's Running with the Keny

Congratulations to Rick Broadbent, Gideon Haigh, David Walsh, Julian Muscat, Graham Hunter, Adharanand Finn, Steven Reid and Stephen Cooper -- eight fine authors who scooped the writing prizes at the British Sports Book Awards. Broadbent, best known as the athletics correspondent of The Times (and the ghost of Jessica Ennis's autobiography), won the motorsports category for That Near-Death Thing , his excellent work on the Isle of Man TT Races seen through the eyes of four riders.  Murray Walker's accolade says it all: "Nobody has succeeded in capturing the spirit of the greatest Motor Sport event with a fraction of the success that Broadbent has." No surprise that the Australian writer Haigh claimed the cricket category prize for On Warne, his analysis of Australia's great leg spinner as a cricketer and a person.  Haigh rarely seems to write a duff sentence, let alone an ordinary book.  This one is a series of beautifully crafted essays examining Warne&#

London 2012 headline-makers Sir Bradley Wiggins and Lord Sebastian Coe -- and Olympic TV presenter Clare Balding -- are among the nominees for the 2013 British Sports Book Awards. A strong field for the 11th edition of the National Sporting Club's annual recognition of excellence in sports writing also includes a number of past winners, among them Duncan Hamilton, Anthony Clavane and Jonathan Wilson. Hamilton, who won best football book in 2008 for Provided You Don't Kiss Me and best biography in 2010 for Harold Larwood, is nominated in the best biography or autobiography category for The Footballer Who Could Fly , which focuses on his own upbringing in the north-east of England. Clavane, whose personal history of Leeds United, Promised Land, won best football book in 2011 and was voted overall sports book of the year in an online poll, is in the running again for best football book for Does Your Rabbi Know You're Here?, which examines of Jewish involvement in