The Sports Bookshelf

REVIEW: THE SECRET RACE, by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle Among all the contenders to be named 2012 William Hill Sports Book of the Year, none is more topical than Tyler Hamilton's disturbing expose of the tainted Lance Armstrong era in professional cycling. The Secret Race , which Hamilton wrote in conjunction with journalist and best-selling author Daniel Coyle, builds on the confession former US Postal team member Hamilton made in front of a grand jury in 2010 during an investigation into the doping allegations that have now led to Armstrong being stripped of the seven Tour de France titles he won between 1999 and 2005. Armstrong dismissed Hamilton's book as an example of a "washed-up cyclist talking trash for cash" but Coyle went to considerable lengths to ensure he was not imparting the one-eyed account of an embittered rival, himself effectively banned for life after failing a drugs test for a second time in 2009, and stripped of his gold medal f

WHAT THEY HAVE SAID ABOUT....Babysitting George, by Celia Walden Celia Walden, beautiful, privately-educated, the daughter of a Conservative MP and, since June last year, wife of television personality and former newspaper editor Piers Morgan, would seem the ideal journalistic fit for Daily Telegraph , for whom she is now a columnist. Her Thursday scribblings offer a commentary, with a sometimes caustic edge, on life, or at least on life towards the upper end of the social spectrum.  It is a long way from the kind of work she was assigned as a young reporter on the staff of the Mail on Sunday in 2003. Very different indeed, for example, from the job handed to her on a Sunday morning late in the July of that year, which involved dropping everything to fly to Malta, where her task would be to ‘babysit’ the paper’s star columnist, one George Best. As a 26-year-old girl with, by her own confession, "little interest in footballers or alcoholics and still less curiosity for th

A review by Anthony Clavane When I was a history teacher, I would have killed for a contemporary historian like Dominic Sandbrook. Or a contemporary history book like State of Emergency . The likes of Eric Hobsbawm and Arthur Marwick would often produce great masterpieces, but they failed to engage with popular culture. And they particularly failed to engage with the sporting events that shaped people's lives. So three cheers for Sandbrook who, entirely predictably, has been labelled "middlebrow" by that breed of earnest, high-minded academic who once dismissed the mighty AJP Taylor as a populist. AJP, of course, would never have dreamed of viewing popular culture through the prism of sport. Nor of describing an England football defeat, as Sandbrook does, as summing up the country's "wider economic and political decline". The defeat in question was the first leg of the 1972 European Championship quarter-final against West Germany. The following year&

A review by Andy Wilson In this lull between the summer and the Ashes, the intriguingly-titled What Are You Doing Out Here? is a diverting, informative and enjoyable read. Norman Harris, who I first encountered as a sub-editor at the Observer and in recent years has become a regular and welcome presence in the Durham press box, has detailed a remarkable sporting story of which I suspect most readers would have been completely unaware - I certainly was. It surrounds the Christmas Test of 1953 between New Zealand and South Africa in Johannesburg, and a brave last-wicket stand between Bert Sutcliffe and Bob Blair. What's so remarkable about that? First, Sutcliffe had been forced to retire hurt, and taken to hospital, after being struck on the head by Neil Adcock early in the New Zealand innings, but insisted on resuming - fortified by a glass of whisky, and with bandages resembling a turban - as they struggled to avoid the follow-on. Blair, meanwhile, had discovered in th

A review by Jeremy Culley The infamous role of Diego Maradona in Argentina’s 1986 World Cup quarter-final with England has become one of football’s greatest paradoxes. The performance, defined equally by the genius of his bewitching second goal as it was by the despicability of his controversial first, propelled his standing in the eyes of the English public from that of a world class player to an all-time great, albeit a flawed one.   But, for England’s embittered fan base, the memories of this match, which provided possibly the greatest goal and the biggest injustice in modern football history, extend to many of Maradona’s supporting act as well. Who could forget a furious Peter Shilton charging at the referee after the diminutive Maradona had miraculously leapt above him to score Argentina’s first? Or John Barnes bringing some flair to the occasion from a white shirt? Or Gary Linekar heading in to give England hope, and himself a sixth goal of the tournament? Strange the

A review by Andy Wilson Sport as social history, anyone? Two rugby league books that have been published in recent weeks – one biography, one autobiography, whose subject matters really are chalk and cheese – are as fascinating for their insights into the development of northern working-class culture over the last few decades as for the professional stories of the players involved. John Holmes grew up in 1950s Kirkstall, a couple of miles from Headingley, where he would wear the blue and amber of Leeds with great distinction in a career spanning the next four decades. 'There was a strong sense of community within that area of Leeds,' recalls his brother Phil, who began working with his own son, Phil Jr, an English teacher at Leeds grammar school, to tell John's story shortly before his death from cancer last autumn at the age of 59. 'A row of shops would provide everything any family would require ... bakers, Bradbury's butchers, a paper shop and, for the ch

It is a fact beyond dispute that, outside the nine or 10 nations in which it is a mainstream sport, foreigners don't really get cricket. Even in some of the countries represented at the ICC World Twenty20, which begins in Guyana on Friday, mention of the game will draw more quizzical looks than comprehension. Of all the things about the game that induce only bafflement, high on the list is the idea that it could have been devised in England. How does anyone invent a game to be played in dry conditions outdoors, over four or even five days, in a country where, on average, rain falls on one day in every three? The answer may be more simple than you think. Clearly, given the number of new cricket books published each year, it was to give spectators convenient interludes in which to read! Of course, not all rain stoppages are equal, and while hours of unremitting drizzle are not exactly an uncommon feature of an English summer there are stop-start days as well, which can be f

Having announced himself as a football writer of note with Behind the Curtain, his journey around Eastern European football, Jonathan Wilson seemed to be taking an enormous risk when he set about trying to entertain his newly-acquired audience with a history of football tactics. It just seemed too dry, too narrow a subject. The kind of person who would identify Dario Gradi as an ideal dinner guest might find it fascinating. But beyond that...? In fact, Wilson's Inverting the Pyramid: A History of Football Tactics has been among the top sellers among football books since it was released in paperback last June. Up to press, 37,000 copies have been printed and it is being translated into seven languages. Gary Naylor, aka Mouth of the Mersey and the Tooting Trumpet, provided The Sports Bookshelf with the following review: "Riquelme has become less a player than a cipher for an ideology". This elegant biography in a sentence turns up on page 326 of Inverting the Pyr

Review: by William Sansome For Steven Gerrard, this season has been one of epic disappointment. Last season's runners-up spot was the closest Liverpool have come for some time to a first domestic title since 1990. Yet this campaign’s challenge fell abysmally short long ago while their prospects of competing in the Champions League next year seem fainter by the day. The Huyton-born England man has also watched Fabio Capello choose Rio Ferdinand as the successor to John Terry as England captain, despite his own credentials being arguably more compelling. All this as the Liverpool and England midfielder nears the end of his prime years, with the possibility of having to leave his beloved Anfield to pursue further glory becoming ever more real. But out of adversity often springs success and for Gerrard, who will be 30 in less than two months' time, this has been a defining aspect of his career. His autobiography, Gerrard: My Autobiography , winner of ‘Sports Book of the