The Sports Bookshelf

Nine categories to be judged as new sponsor starts three-year backing The shortlists have been announced for the annual Sports Book Awards, now sponsored by The Telegraph after the newspaper group signed up to a three-year partnership deal. The Telegraph replaces Cross Pens as headline sponsor. The awards were launched by the National Sporting Club in 2003 and for many years were known simply as the British Sports Book Awards. There are nine categories being judged this year, with the winners of each to be announced early in June. In the autobiography category, former Newcastle physio Paul Ferris’s extraordinary memoir The Boy on the Shed is joined by equestrian Charlotte Dujardin’s The Girl on the Dancing Horse , Kevin Keegan’s My Life in Football , cricketer Moeen Ali’s Moeen , How to be a Footballer by Peter Crouch and superbike star Jonathan Rea’s Dream. Believe. Achieve . The biography category sees boxing, golf, motor racing, rowing, gambling and football repre...

Max Mosley, Guillem Balague, Ronda Rousey and David Millar also take prizes Tim Lane and Elliot Cartledge worthy winners of Cricket award for Peter Roebuck biography Chasing Shadows Andy Bull's Speed Kings and Ed Caesar's Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon were among the outstanding books to be recognised as winners at the 2016 Cross British Sports Book Awards. The Times Biography of the Year prize went to Guardian journalist Bull, whose Speed Kings (Bantam Press) is the story of the four maverick adventurers who came together from disparate backgrounds to form the United States team who were four-man bobsleigh champions at the 1932 Winter Olympics. Caesar was named Freshtime New Writer of the Year for Two Hours (Viking), an engaging study of elite marathon runners from around the world and the challenge of covering the classic distance of 26 miles 385 yards in less than two hours. As in previous years, a public vote on the 10 winners of the b...

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...

Here is the full roll call of winners and the shortlists for each category: Best Autobiography:  Winner -- Open: An Autobiography  by Andre Agassi (HarperCollins) Shortlisted: Chris Hoy: the Autobiography  (HarperCollins),  Just For Kicks: The Autobiography  by Kenny Logan (Headline), Michael Vaughan: Time to Declare - My Autobiography  (Hodder & Stoughton), Lucky Break  by Paul Nichols (Orion), Ben Ainslie: Close to the Wind - Autobiography of Britain's Greatest Olympic Sailor  (Yellow Jersey). Best biography:  Winner -- Harold Larwood  by Duncan Hamilton (Quercus) Shortlisted: Olympic Gangster: The Legend of Jose Beyaert - Cycling Champion, Fortune Hunter and Outlaw by Matt Rendell (Mainstream), Born to Run: The Rise of Ultra-running and the Super-athlete Tribe  by Chris McDougall (Profile Books), The Last Champion: The Life of Fred Perry by Jon Henderson  (Yellow Jersey), Jacobs Beach: The Mob, the Garde...