The Sports Bookshelf

Mike Jakeman's love of Test cricket could not be clearer than is exemplified in the introduction to Saving The Test, in which he underlines his respect for the 20 and 50-over versions of the game but then lauds Michael Atherton's 185 not out against South Africa at Johannesburg in December 1995 as more or less the essence of why Test cricket should be viewed in a different, superior context.  That contest, thanks to Atherton's 645-minute, 492-ball vigil, ended in a draw. While not watching, reading about, or generally enthusing over some aspect of cricket, Jakeman is a political and economic analyst attached to The Economist Intelligence Unit, specialising in Australia and Indonesia. It is a combination of interests that enables him to view cricket from a perspective that sets him apart from other commentators more directly involved in the game, one which allows him to bring knowledge but a degree of distance to his arguments. Jakeman, you suspect, is the kind of e

Given his reputation for taking no prisoners in his verbal exchanges with members of the press, journalists have been taken aback at how charming and patient Sir Alex Ferguson has become since announcing his retirement, particularly when he has been promoting his autobiography. Yet it is a side to the former Manchester United manager that media professionals of a certain age remember well from the distant days in which Fergie was still trying to win friends as well as influence people. In his own new book -- Don't You Know Who I Am? -- BBC broadcaster Peter Slater recalls the old Alex as hospitable, co-operative and as accommodating a manager as any with whom he might wish to seek an audience. "My first contact came in the autumn of 1981," Slater writes. "I was sports editor of Radio Orwell in Ipswich, and Ipswich Town, the UEFA Cup holders, had been drawn to start their defence against Aberdeen, managed at that time by Alex. "The first leg was at Po

Doped: The Real Life Story of the 1960s Racehorse Doping Gang has won the 2013 William Hill Sports Book of the Year award for journalist Jamie Reid. The saga of 1960s turf skullduggery, in which a crooked bookmaker and his glamorous mistress, plus miscellaneous  gangsters, bent stable lads and a drug supplier nicknamed 'the Witch Doctor', conspired to nobble high-profile racehorses, won the vote of the judges to clinch the 25th anniversary award from a field that included two other tales of cheating in sport from the worlds of cycling and cricket. Seven Deadly Sins , in which journalist David Walsh recounts his pursuit of the disgraced Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, and Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy , which reveals many truths and destroys some myths about match-fixing in cricket, were both close contenders. A six-strong shortlist also included the straight-talking and grittily honest football autobiography I Am Zlatan Ibrahomivic , the story of an heroic Olympic ro

When the title of William Hill Sports Book of the Year was awarded for the first time back in 1989, the winning volume came not from the world of football or cricket or rugby or boxing or any of the sports we regard as mainstream, but from rowing. It was a cracking story, though.   True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny , written by the Oxford coach, Dan Topolski, with the help of the author and journalist Patrick Robinson, described the extraordinary events that preceded the 1987 University Boat Race, when five US international rowers parachuted in to bolster a team soundly thrashed on the Thames the year before ultimately quit after a series of clashes with coach Topolski. The 2013 winner will be named this evening, with the possibility that the 25th anniversary award of sport's oldest and richest literary prize will go to another rowing book. The Boys in the Boat: An Epic True-Life Journey to the Heart of Hitler's Berlin , by Daniel James Brown, recounts another out

Jonathan Wilson's position as the pre-eminent thinking man's football writer is likely only to be reinforced by his latest offering, which applies the formula he employed so effectively in The Anatomy of England for the first time to the history of a club. The Anatomy of Liverpool: A History in Ten Matches , which he has written in collaboration with another football writer, Guardian on-line's Liverpool-supporting Scott Murray, promises to be the first in a line of innovative club histories. As with The Anatomy of England , this examination of Liverpool's evolution is constructed around 10 games the authors considered to have had particular significance, even if they are not always the most obvious or famous games.  The England book, for example, examined the 1966 World Cup through the prism of the quarter-final against Argentina, rather than the final. "When I sat down with Scott over a meal to discuss which games we would include, we looked for a spread

When Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyne won the 2012 William Hill Sports Book of the Year award for their cycling drugs expose, The Secret Race, the judging panel's view was that the book's central role -- or, at least, the role of the evidence contained in it -- in bringing cheats to justice meant that it was almost impossible for it not to be their winner. The same argument might be put forward for Seven Deadly Sins , the story of journalist David Walsh's 13-year pursuit of the disgraced multiple Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong, a piece of dogged investigative reporting unparalleled in sports journalism which could be said to be equally important in exposing the biggest doping conspiracy in sports history. Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong (Simon & Schuster) is among a shortlist of six titles from which the 2013 William Hill Sports Book of the Year will be chosen, with the winner due to be announced on Wednesday November 27. Author Walsh,

Given the substantial number of cricket books published each year, it would be unusual if none emerged as a candidate for William Hill Sports Book of the Year. For the 2013 award, the shortlist quite rightly includes the fine piece of investigative journalism that revealed the true nature of corruption in cricket, or at least took the reader closer to the truth than anything hitherto undertaken. Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy (Bloomsbury) is written by Ed Hawkins, who has made his name for his knowledge of betting rather than batting or bowling, collecting awards year after year for his insightful analysis on the Betfair website.  His motivation in delving into the underworld of illegal bookmaking in India was not so much about uncovering corrupt cricketers as understanding how and why fixes happen. His findings were startling, not least because they questioned whether the fix famously exposed by the News of the World that resulted in three Pakistan cricketers -- Salman Butt, Mohamma

Horse racing, which has provided the subject matter for only one winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year so far, has a strong candidate this year in Doped: The Real Life Story of the 1960s Racehorse Doping Gang. Written by journalist Jamie Reid, the story of the biggest horse-nobbling racket in the history of the sport in Britain would emulate the 2001 success of Seabiscuit, Laura Hillenbrand's wonderful story of the colt with famously crooked legs that became an equine hero in post-Depression America, should the judges take a fancy to it. Steeped in underworld menace, with a cast of characters that could have been born in the imagination of a thriller writer, Doped rattles along at such an unputdownable pace that it would be no surprise were it to follow Seabiscuit on to the big screen. In essence, it is the tale of a conspiracy involving a crooked bookmaker, Bill Roper, his glamorous mistress, various gangsters, bent stable lads and a drug supplier nicknamed

To those familiar with the literary standards normally associated with footballers' autobiographies, it will come as no surprise to learn that the William Hill Sports Book of the Year has yet to find a winner from that genre, even though the most prestigious of all sports book prizes is now in its 25th year. That might be about to change.  Among the shortlist for the 2013 award, announced after the field of 17 named in the longlist was reduced to six, is I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the self-told story of one of Europe's most successful strikers. Published in Sweden in 2011, the memoirs of the multi-decorated striker -- currently with Paris St Germain after a career that has brought him league titles in Italy, the Netherlands and Spain as well as France -- sold 500,000 copies in hardback within two months and subsequently achieved worldwide sales running into millions. Ibrahimovic is not short of fans -- the rapture that greeted his four goals for Sweden against England i

As the man whose grand jury testimony brought down the most successful and celebrated cheat in the history of sport, cyclist Tyler Hamilton was out on his own among last year's contenders for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year. The field for this year's prize -- the 25th since the award was launched in 1989 -- looks much more open. The longlist for the 2013 'Bookie Prize' sees football, tennis, rowing, horseracing, athletics, cycling and ping-pong among the sports represented, and features writers and performers from France, the Netherlands, America, Britain, Spain, Italy and Sweden. After the success of Tyler Hamilton's The Secret Race , there is another take on the downfall of Lance Armstrong in the shape of Seven Deadly Sins , which recounts the long campaign waged by another of those who helped expose the truth about the seven-times Tour de France champion's systematic drug use, the Sunday Times journalist, David Walsh. But it will take somet