The Sunday Times sports book of the year

Can We Have Our Balls Back Please? by Julian Norridge (Allen Lane £17.99)

How resourceful and generous we Britons are. Having invented, developed and codified the sports of the world, mostly during the Victorian period, we retired to let others strive for excellence. Thorough, sound in judgment and light of touch, this survey of the many sports we gave to the world, on turf, court, track and water, is a work of both reference and unexpected pleasures. Two gems among many: no, William Webb Ellis probably didn't pick up the ball and run at Rugby school; and yes, despite American protestations to the contrary, the British invented baseball.

WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING by HARUKI MURAKAM
IHarvill Secker £9.99
“Most of what I know about writing I've learned through running every day,” writes the celebrated Japanese author who has completed 25 marathons as well as several ultra-endurance races. The common denominators are obvious: both require perseverance and entail a journey compiled step by step, word by word. Good writing, though, also demands the meticulousness of the craftsman. In this regard, Murakami's deceptively simple prose and philosophical ruminations are a joy.

THE GREAT SWIM by GAVIN MORTIMER
Short Books £14.99
Five men, beginning with Captain Webb in 1875, but no women, had already swum the English Channel when four female American contenders, plus a couple from Europe, took on the challenge in the summer of 1926. Their long-forgotten battles against cold, adverse tides, jellyfish and each other were front-page news on both sides of the Atlantic and are marvellously brought back to life here. After many heroic failures, the climax was a worthy one: Gertrude Ederle, a 19-year-old Olympic swimmer from New York, was the first woman to do it, breaking the men's record by two hours.

INVERTING THE PYRAMID by JONATHAN WILSON
Orion £18.99
In the first football international, played between Scotland and England in 1872, the England XI's formation was 1-2-7: one defender, two in midfield and seven forwards. Scotland, rather cautiously, fielded only six up front. Nevertheless, it was a goalless draw. Almost a century later, in the 1966 World Cup final, Alf Ramsey's “wingless wonders” fielded two forwards but scored four goals. This history of football tactics is global in breadth and thorough, a rare and welcome analytical addition to the literature of the world's most popular game.

MY ENGLAND YEARS by BOBBY CHARLTON
Headline £20
The second instalment of Charlton's autobiography deals with his international career, 1966 and all that. In the famous final, Charlton reveals, he was ordered to man-mark Franz Beckenbauer, the chief German threat, who, meanwhile, had been ordered to shadow Charlton. No wonder they seemed inseparable on that golden afternoon. As in volume one, the combination of Charlton's story and the work of James Lawton, whose contribution is too solid to be termed ghostly, is unstoppable.

PLAYING THE ENEMY by JOHN CARLIN
Atlantic £18.99
In modern South Africa, sport and politics have mixed nicely. The sporting boycott of the 1970s and 1980s played a significant part in isolating and undermining the apartheid regime, and helping to make possible the release of Nelson Mandela. It was Mandela's political genius to realise that the fledgling South African democracy could survive only through magnanimity and forgiveness. With his instinct for the power of symbolism, he dumbfounded the Boer backlash by wearing a Springbok shirt at the 1995 Rugby World Cup final. This authoritative account of that final, as detailed on political background as it is on sporting events, captures the astuteness of Mandela's actions.

THE AUSTERITY OLYMPICS by JANIE HAMPTON
Aurum £18.99
If the idea is to bring nations together, to generate a feel-good factor at home and provide a stage for heroes and heroines, the 1948 London Games will take some beating come 2012. With a budget of £760,000, rationing still in force and “make do and mend” the watchword, they seem closer to a fete than to the modern Games of Gargantua. But some of the greatest of all Olympic champions, such as Emil Zatopek and Fanny Blankers-Koen, made their mark. This history of those games is comprehensive and scholarly as well as evocative, and seasoned with telling human detail.

IN PURSUIT OF GLORY: The Autobiography by BRADLEY WIGGINS
Orion £18.99
With an all-too-obvious title, a ghostwriter and a rush to print after a haul of Olympic medals, this should have been an awful book. But Wiggins has a tough story to tell and he does it with an honesty that disregards embarrassment and pain. His father, a leading cyclist in his day, abandoned him as an infant. Brought up by his mother on a council estate in Paddington, Wiggins went on to exceed his father's feats on track and road but also shared his propensity for going off the rails. One senses that further triumphs and travails will ensue.

DON'T MENTION THE SCORE: A Masochists' History of the England Football Team by SIMON BRIGGS
Quercus £12.99
In his irreverent, often hilarious survey of the England football team over 136 years of general underachievement, the author addresses a pertinent, perennial question: “Why do we insist on building up our boys as favourites to win every major tournament? Why do we portray moderate players as giants when it is so obvious that the whole thing will end in tears (or penalty shoot-outs, which is much the same thing)?” The reason lingers in the psyche of almost every football fan: the triumph of hope over experience.

OF HORSES AND HEROES by BROUGH SCOTT
Racing Post £20
After 60 years as a jump-jockey, a journalist and a prominent member of racing's great and good, the author salutes those who have impressed him most, from Lester Piggott to Red Rum. This is a book straight from the heart, and while the complete absence of cynicism can seem quaint, Scott's intimacy with his subjects and superb description give depth. His ultimate hero is the Thoroughbred, “the fastest weight-carrying creature the world has ever seen and England's greatest gift to the animal kingdom”.

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