For sport nuts these are all winners!
ABSOLUTELY FOXED
by Graeme Fowler (Simon & Schuster £18.99) A SPARKLING mid-life autobiography from a cricketer whose personality lit up 21 Test matches in the early Eighties.
Fowler is a one-off, a wag and a wit who went on to become a successful one-to-one coach at Durham University. He has also suffered horribly from depression, which he describes with intelligence and sensitivity.
Highlights include a chapter on Sir Ian Botham, whom he insists is a wonderful man as long as you do everything he wants you to do.
Now possessed of a biblical beard, Fowler must be interesting enough for a regular slot on Test Match Special or Sky Sports.
UNEXPECTED
by Greg Rutherford (Simon & Schuster £20) THOUGH he is one of our most eminent Olympians, long jumper Rutherford could have probably wandered down most British streets undisturbed until his Strictly fame.
This is an odd book, by a man who has never felt comfortable in his skin. Chapters have titles such as ‘Tough Times’ and ‘No Christmas, No Birthdays’.
His Jehovah’s Witness parents argued, he was lousy at school,
and it was always cold or raining. Rutherford was Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth champion at the same time — and still doesn’t feel appreciated.
THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE
by Howard Webb (Simon & Schuster £20) IN THE late Eighties, Howard Webb realised he wasn’t talented enough to make it as a footballer. ‘Why don’t you take up the whistle?’ suggested his father. ‘You never know, son, you might even like it.’
Barely 20 years later, Webb was refereeing the World Cup final.
Webb is perhaps a little too anxious to show us he’s a normal bloke, likes beer and curries, and doesn’t go to bed in his ref’s kit (well, not every night anyway), while there’s little doubt it was his terrifying bald head and tiny, calculating eyes that made him so widely respected.
Jeremy Clarkson once shouted at him ‘Get yer hair cut!’, though from a few yards away, I noticed.
UNGUARDED
by Jonathan Trott (Sphere £20) TROTT scored runs almost at will for England for years, but came a cropper on the last tour of Australia, from which he returned early.
Few more intense batsmen have played for England, and in truth he did well to survive so long.
This is a painfully honest book characterised by a dry wit: Trott’s eyebrow is perpetually raised at the absurdity of it all. He can be thin-skinned, but what could have been a gruelling book is notable for its emotional intelligence.
MY TURN
by Johan Cruyff (Macmillan £20) GENIUS speaks. Cruyff, who died in March aged 68, was one of football’s most creative players, and his memoir shows he knew that.
It’s hard to imagine anyone more obsessed with football. Even Sir Alex Ferguson had a racehorse, for heaven’s sake.
‘I see touching the ball once as the highest form of technique. But to be able to touch the ball perfectly once, you need to have touched it a hundred thousand times in training.’
That sums up the book — undoubtedly the best football book I’ve read since Ferguson’s last one.