The Sports Bookshelf

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

Five publishers battled for KP's guaranteed best seller Boycott's cancer fight catalyst for new autobiography Pietersen's focus was on airing his grievances Yorkshire batsman opens up as never before Reviews Books shop sports sections used to bulge with cricket biographies. These days, few see the light of day with the larger publishers if they do not scream 'guaranteed best seller.' That was clearly the case with two that did find a place in mainstream catalogues in 2014. After all the claims and counter-claims that surrounded his jettisoning from England's cricket teams, Kevin Pietersen's autobiography was always going to fly off the shelves as the South African-born batsman -- the most exciting star in the English game since Ian Botham -- took the opportunity to tell his side of the biggest cricket story since Botham's chequered career was making front page headlines in the 1980s. It was no wonder there were five publishers competing

Lord's cricket ground this week hosts an event the organisers hope will become an important annual fixture on the sports books calendar as the home of cricket stages the London Festival of Sports Writing for the second time. A host of authors will take part in four days of fascinating conversation over a series of talks, panel discussions, book signings and masterclasses. Top-of-the-bill Roy Keane's appearance on Saturday evening, when he will be discussing his hard-hitting new autobiography, The Second Half, with co-author Roddy Doyle has already sold out, but there plenty of other opportunities to listen to other authors talking about their work. Brian Moore, the former England and Lions hooker, appears on tomorrow's programme with the Mail on Sunday's Alison Kervin to discuss his latest book, What Goes on Tour Stays on Tour, due out next month, a memoir that happily promises not to live up to its title. Moore, now a columnist and pundit, won the 2010 Wil

You have to hand it to Roy Keane, he has done his best to steal a few headlines from Kevin Pietersen after the two most controversial sports books of the year appeared in the shops on the same day this week. After sitting back and allowing KP the first round of media calls ahead of the publication of KP: The Autobiography ,  Keane made the most of his chance with a powerful response at the launch of Roy Keane: The Second Half. Both books are already selling in thousands, with online retailer Amazon this afternoon placing them at second and third in their bestsellers chart, with Keane nudging just in front of the former England cricketer.  Only Awful Auntie, a children's novel written by David Walliams, is currently attracting more sales. Keane's big selling point is his scrap with Sir Alex Ferguson, from whom he famously parted on bitter terms after 12 years of enormous success at Old Trafford and who he claims fed deliberate lies to the media in order to discredit hi

Just in case anyone has somehow failed to see or hear any of the Kevin Pietersen's interviews promoting his book -- or more accurately giving several former teammates and coaches a good kicking -- there is a chance to witness his anger and dismay close up when the ostracised England batsman appears at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Sunday (October 12). Pietersen will be talking about his colourful and controversial life and the elements of it that make up KP: The Autobiography in the company of his ghostwriter, the Sunday Times journalist David Walsh, in The Times Forum marquee in Montpellier Gardens. The event begins at 7.30pm and is due to last an hour and a quarter.  Tickets are available from the Festival's own website , priced at £16. Incidentally, setting aside the nature of the content, which will appeal to Pietersen's supporters and confirm to his detractors why they loathe him, the book is superbly written by Walsh, whose style perfectly captures P

When Roy Keane's publishers chose this Thursday -- October 9 -- as the date to release the controversial client's new autobiography, did they not know that they were clashing with a certain Kevin Pietersen? If there is one person who could trump Keano for headline-making revelations, then it is KP. Pietersen's first major pre-publication interview appeared in the Daily Telegraph on Monday, prompting just about every national newspaper to clear their pages for the inevitable reaction. The Times have exclusive extracts to the Keane biography, The Second Half, which is ghosted, interestingly, by the Booker prize-winning Irish novelist Roddy Doyle, and give them due prominence. Elsewhere, however, he barely gets a look-in as cricket correspondents and chief sports writers get to grips with KP's revelations and the fall-out, which has already reached levels unprecedented in the long history of cricket books. Keane was helped when a Tesco store in Greater M

Kevin Pietersen's autobiography is due out next month, with a promise to reveal the detail of his parting of the ways with the England cricket team, until now shackled by the confidentiality clause that accompanied his dismissal.  Its impending publication has been a long time in the public domain, allowing rival publishers to offer something by way of competition. More often than not, such spoilers are barely worthy of mention, old material rehashed in haste by a writer with no sources of information beyond a pile of newspaper cuttings or, these days, whatever he can turn up on Google. Simon Wilde's book, On Pietersen: The Making of KP, is considerably better than that, being not so much a biography as an appraisal, in the form of a series of essays, by the Sunday Times cricket correspondent, who has reported on Pietersen's career in its entirety, certainly since he first crossed England's radar, and has diligently gone back to many of the coaches and fellow pl

The latest episode in the cricket soap opera surrounding Kevin Pietersen looks unlikely to bring any insights into life behind the scenes in the England cricket dressing room, even though the most talented and controversial England batsman of recent years looks to have jettisoned for good, with a great many secrets to take with him. Andrew Strauss Perhaps what England skipper Alastair Cook and ex-head coach Andy Flower really think about Pietersen brilliant but destructive career will be revealed in a book one day, when what appears to be a mutually agreed omertà among the parties involved can be put to one side. In the meantime, here's some of what Cook's predecessor Andrew Strauss had to say about KP in his autobiography, Driving Ambition , published by Hodder and Stoughton in October last year, beginning with the call from Flower that marked the start of the 'textgate' saga that marred the last weeks of the former captain's career. Strauss recalled th