The Sports Bookshelf

A sporting life with a darker side has again found favour with the judging panel for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, who have awarded the richest prize for sports writing to the ex-England and British Lions rugby star Brian Moore. The former hooker, known as ‘Pit Bull’ in his playing days in the 1990s, scooped the £22,000 award for his harrowing, soul-baring autobiography Beware of the Dog: Rugby's Hardman Reveals All. Two years ago, the William Hill judges went for former England cricketer Marcus Trescothick’s autobiography, Coming Back to Me , which broke new ground in the sports book genre by discussing the depression that ended the Somerset batsman’s international career. Moore’s memoirs are equally raw and revealing, in the most deeply personal and painful sense, bringing to light for the first time the sexual abuse he suffered as a boy at the hands of a trusted friend of his adoptive parents. Beware of the Dog beat off competition from a strong field that i

Part Two -- A Quintet on Cricket Between now and December 25th, The Sports Bookshelf will provide a regular selection of sports books that might tickle your fancy or interest a son, daughter, friend or partner as you weigh up what to put under the tree this Christmas.  Click on the title or the picture to buy securely from Amazon. Thanks, Johnners: An Affectionate Tribute to a Broadcasting Legend Brian Johnston died in 1994 but to scores of Test Match Special listeners it is his name that comes to mind at the mention of TMS, even now.  Jonathan Agnew salutes his unique place in the history of the BBC’s iconic cricket commentary show in a warm and witty homage to a man alongside whom he worked for only three years but whose informal, mischievous style made Agnew the broadcaster he is today.  Those three precious years also produced the most famous moment in TMS history when Agnew’s description of the way Ian Botham “didn’t quite get his leg over” as he was dismissed ‘hit-wicket’

Former England cricketer Marcus Trescothick has been awarded the Making a Difference award at the Mind Mental Health Media Awards 2010 in recognition of his decision to write and speak publicly about his personal experience of depression.  The awards by Britain’s leading mental health charity identify the most effective portrayals of mental distress and reporting of mental health in broadcast and new media.  The Making a Difference award is presented to someone who has made a genuine impact on the way that mental health is viewed. Trescothick, who continues to play cricket as captain of Somerset, was recognised for his involvement with the BBC’s Inside Sport documentary investigating depression amongst sportsmen, and for his candid autobiography Coming Back To Me , detailing what it is like to live with the condition. He retired from international cricket because of his illness but has made efforts to raise awareness of mental health problems in the media, helping bring mental

David Frith has probably put too many backs up and exposed too many raw truths to be held in quite the same affection among cricket writers as, say, Neville Cardus, or John Arlott.  His love for the game runs no less deep; indeed, his life has been one of slavish devotion to the game. Yet there has rarely been a mist of sentimentality obscuring his view. As he explains in his preface to this collection of his writings, Frith’s ambition was “to share the pleasure and excitement as well as the recurring indignation at the bruises inflicted on cricket by the greedy and uncaring”. The pieces in Frith on Cricket , chosen by the author, include some extracts from 30 or more books but draw heavily from his magazine and newspaper writing, much of which will have been long forgotten. The advantage this provides lies not only in offering Frith’s admirers access to work with which they may not be familiar but also in the unpolished honesty of the work, written under the pressure of dead

Sebastian Vettel’s timing could not have been better.  With the Formula One drivers’ championship still open to four contenders as the cars lined up on the grid for the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi, Vettel produced the perfect drive at the perfect moment. With pre-race points leader Fernando Alonso unable to finish in the first four, which would have denied Vettel the title, the 23-year-old German became the youngest F1 champion, his victory putting him in front for the only time in the championship. By consensus, he drove a superb race.  But did he find himself in the zone?  It is not a phrase often recognised as carrying profound meaning.  Indeed, in most sports it would convey nothing more than a sense of focus or concentration, a basic prerequisite to success. In motor racing, however, to be in the zone is to reach an almost mystical place, or a state of mind in any event, in which the driver and car effectively become one entity, the occupant of the cockpit as m

Part One -- Five on Football Between now and December 25th, The Sports Bookshelf will provide a regular selection of sports books that might tickle your fancy or interest a son, daughter, friend or partner as you weigh up what to put under the tree this Christmas.  Click on the title or the picture to buy securely from Amazon. John Giles: A Football Man - My Autobiography Johnny Giles, brilliant midfield craftsman of the Don Revie era at Leeds United, hits back at what he considers the myth of ‘Dirty Leeds’, suggesting that the image of the club has been tainted by repeated distortions of the truth, the worst of which have come about since David Peace’s fact-into-fiction account, The Damned United, was turned into a film, which Giles described as “a misinterpretation of the misinterpretation of the book”.  Those Leeds supporters of a certain age who have to scratch their heads to remember Giles as the sly psychopath of recent reinvention will see this as a welcome revision.

Here’s an interesting poser.  Were you to canvass the opinions of 100 of the greatest players in cricket history, from the late Sir Alec Bedser to Shane Warne, and ask them to name which players from the last 100 years or so would merit selection for an all-time world XI, which England cricketer do you suppose would win the most votes? The answer might surprise you a little, as it possibly did journalist Richard Sydenham, who has had the patience and staying power to track down 100 players willing to name their best XI and then painstakingly record and classify their choices in a new book. In a League of Their Own: 100 Cricket Legends Select Their World XI lists 108 different nominees for places in these 100 fantasy elites, of whom 25 were England players.  Only Australia, with 30, had a stronger representation. So which of the 25 was the most popular choice?  Ian Botham? Geoffrey Boycott? Or, going back a little further, perhaps Len Hutton? In fact, it was none of those.  Ne

There is a lot to be said for a good collaborator, which may explain why Open , the soul-baring autobiography of American tennis star Andre Agassi, is in line for a second award in Britain. Open , which was voted Best Biography’ at the British Sports Book awards in March, has made the shortlist of six for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2010. It is a strong story, one in which Agassi confesses not only to using the recreational drug, crystal meth, and lying about it to avoid being banned from his sport, but to hating tennis after being forced into it by a controlling father, so much so that he likened much of his early life and career to being imprisoned in an existence over which he had no control. Agassi chose his own ‘ghost’ but none of the tennis writers of his acquaintance fitted the bill, apparently.  Instead, he contacted John Moehringer Jnr, better known by his byline, JR Moehringer, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist whose own memoir about growing up fatherles