In 12 years he achieved 12,472 runs, 161 Test matches, 33 hundreds, and 4 Ashes series wins.But such records only tell half the story. Why, at the relatively early age of 33, did he suddenly quit?Cricket, the sport of gleaming whites and gentility, is polite, friendly, and reserved. But beneath the surface anxiety looms, tensions run high and emotions can be explosive.Alastair began and ended his England cricketing career on soaring highs, yet at times he feared for his career. He embodies the resilience, endurance and mental determination required at the highest level of international sport, fighting against the constant pressure and the ever-present fear of failure. He recounts the fiery fall-out with Kevin Pietersen and the ruthless decisions a captain must make. He expands on the highs of leading England to their first series win in India in 28 years, the glory of four Ashes wins and what, finally, convinced him to leave international cricket. To know Alastair Cook is to know what it takes to be successful, in any field. In this candid autobiography he captures not only what it takes to be one of England's greatest sportsmen but also the price paid by a professional athlete at the top of his game.

    This is THE cricket biography of 2013. Michael Hussey's huge popularity does not rest solely on his incredible playing record. Popularly known as Mr Cricket, he made his Test debut against the West Indies in Brisbane in November 2005, and has scored 6,183 Test runs over 78 Tests in his career. But to his fans, it is the way he plays the game rather than simply the sum of his achievements that marks him out as one of the best-loved cricketers of his generation. He is a middle-order maestro with a batting average of 51.52, but he has always played cricket with an integrity and sense of values that is the epitome of what cricket stands for. His autobiography takes you behind the scenes to his world of cricket. From his lengthy struggle to break into the Australian side, through to his masterly achievements in the Australian team, in ODI and Indian Premier League - this book follows his extraordinary cricket career., with plenty of surprisingly frank admissions & behind the scenes dramas.

    Golden curled and boyishly handsome, his rise and fall as captain and player is unparalleled in our cricketing history. He played at least three innings that count as all-time classics, but it's his tearful resignation from the captaincy that is remembered. Insecure but arrogant, abrasive but charming; in Hughes' character were the seeds of his own destruction. Yet was Hughes' fall partly due to those around him, men who are themselves legends in Australia's cricketing history? Lillee, Marsh, and the Chappells, all had their agendas, all were unhappy with his selection and performance as captain—evidenced by Dennis Lillee's tendency to aim bouncers relentlessly at Hughes' head during net practice. As he traces the high points and the low, Chris Ryan sheds new and fascinating light on the cricket—and the cricketers—of the times.

    Suddenly one of the most active men you'd ever meet couldn't even get up off the sofa to make a cup of tea. In Absolutely Foxed, a cricket memoir like no other, Fowler takes the reader on a vivid ride, with riotous stories of life on England tours, partying with Ian Botham and Elton John, combined with a moving account of his battle with mental-health issues. A hugely influential coach, and one of the most original thinkers about the game, Fowler looks back over his 40 years in the professional game, including his 16 years on the county circuit with Lancashire and Durham, and his three years as an England international - a period that was cut short by a life-threatening injury. He followed that with a spell working on Test Match Special, before running the Durham Centre of Excellence for 18 years. In his Foreword, lifelong friend Sir Ian Botham describes Fowler as 'one of the gutsiest I ever encountered', but also points out how he 'made a dressing room tick'. Those elements of courage, knowledge and humour are all present in Absolutely Foxed - a truly unmissable read.

    John Arlott and E.W. ('Jim') Swanton transformed the broadcasting of the nation's summer game into a national institution. For any cricket follower in his fifties or older, just the mention of their names immediately evokes a flood of memories.Swanton was born into a middle-class family and privately educated; Arlott was the son of a working-class council employee, educated at state schools until he left at the age of sixteen. Because of their strong personalities and distinctive voices – Swanton's crisp and upper-class, Arlott's with its Hampshire burr – each had a loyal following in the post-war years, when England's class system had a slot for almost everyone. Within a few minutes of the start of a conversation, it would be possible to identify the speaker as an Arlott or a Swanton man.Arlott and Swanton never grew to like each other, but both typified the contrasting aspects of post-war Britain and the way both it and the game they loved was to change. As England moved from a class-based to a more egalitarian society, nothing stayed the same – including professional cricket. Wise, lively and filled with rich social and sporting history, Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket shows how these two very different men battled to save the soul of the game as it entered a new era.

    Its cricket team evolved in the chaotic aftermath. Initially unrecognised, underfunded and weak, Pakistan's team grew to become a major force in world cricket. Since the early days of the Raj, cricket has been entwined with national identity and Pakistan's successes helped to define its status in the world. Defiant in defence, irresistible in attack, players such as A.H.Kardar, Fazal Mahmood, Wasim Akram and Imran Khan awed their contemporaries and inspired their successors. The story of Pakistan cricket is filled with triumph and tragedy. In recent years, it has been threatened by the same problems affecting Pakistan itself: fallout from the 'war on terror', sectarian violence, corruption, crises in health and education, and a shortage of effective leaders. For twenty years, Pakistan cricket has been stained by the scandalous behaviour of the players involved in match-fixing. Since 2009, the fear of violence has driven Pakistan's international cricket into exile. No one knows when it will return home. But Peter Oborne's narrative is also full of hope. For all its troubles, cricket gives all Pakistanis a chance to excel and express themselves, a sense of identity and a cause for pride in their country. Packed with first-hand recollections, and digging deep into political, social and cultural history, Wounded Tiger is a major study of sport and nationhood.

    He has accumulated phenomenal achievements, world points records, an impressive list of broken body parts, and a drop goal that will be remembered forever.But the peculiar calmness with which he played the game masked a very different reality.In Jonny, he reveals the extraordinary psychology that he had to tame in order to be able to dominate his sport. For most of his life, he was driven by a quest for perfection and an obsession to be the best player in the world; here he shows how these two facets of his competitive mind took such a hold of him that they sent him to the top of the world, then swept him up and dragged him down in a spiral of despair.Jonny's career has spanned the far reaches: amazing high and iconic moments, then a fight against injury that culminated in a battle with depression.Here he tells of the physical toll he knew his body was taking from rugby, even from his youth; he tells of how he never wanted to be a kicking fly-half but learnt to adapt his natural game to play the style that Clive Woodward believed necessary to win a World Cup, and how he nearly walked out on Martin Johnson's England team 13 years later.Jonny is the unrelenting, brutally honest account of one of the most revered, successful and complex athletes ever to play rugby for England."

    He knew the highlights of his father's career by heart. But when his dad died he realised they were all he knew. He began to realise, too, that he'd lost the passion for football that his father had passed down to him. In this book he faces his growing alienation from the game he was born into, as he revisits key periods in his father's career to build up a picture of his football life - and through him a whole era.‘The most emotionally charged and moving sports book I've ever read’ Daily Mail

    In his twenty-year career, Bonds has amassed an unprecedented 7 Most Valuable Player awards, 8 Gold Gloves, and more than 700 home runs (and counting), an impressive assortment of feats that has earned him the consideration as one of the greatest players the game has ever seen. Equally deserved, however, is his reputation as an insufferable braggart, whose mythical home runs are rivaled only by his legendary ego. From his staggering ability and fabled pedigree (father Bobby played outfield for the Giants; cousin Reggie and godfather Willie are both Hall of Famers), to his well-documented run-ins with teammates and his alleged steroid abuse, Bonds inspires a like amount of passion from both sides of the fence. For many, Bonds belongs beside Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron in baseball’s holy trinity; for others, he embodies all that is wrong with the modern athlete: aloof; arrogant; alienated.In “Love Me, Hate Me,” journalist Jeff Pearlman, author of the bestselling “The Bad Guys Won,” offers a searing and insightful look into one of the most divisive athletes of our time. Drawing on extensive interviews with Bonds himself, members of his family, former and current managers, teammates, opponents, trainers, outspoken critics, and unapologetic supporters alike, Pearlman reveals, for the first time, a wonderfully nuanced portrait of a prodigiously talented--and immensely flawed--American icon, whose controversial run at baseball immortality forever changed the way we look at our sports heroes.

    As both a former player and now a professional observer and commentator on the game he knows all the key figures of the sport and has witnessed first-hand some of cricket's greatest moments. His book is a personal account of the game as he's seen and experienced it across the globe. From epic test matches to titans of the game like Lara, Warne and Tendulkar, to his own childhood love for the sport, Mark gives us his informed, personal and fascinating views on cricket - the world's other beautiful game.

    Fiery, combative, gladiatorial - he plays the game hard and with great gusto. He is an all-rounder who bats, bowls and fields at full throttle.Some opponents feel threatened by his physical stature and aggressive brand of cricket. Stokes simply doesn't back down, smashing the next ball for six, bowling his 90 mph "chin music", or taking a breathtakingly full-stretch catch at backward point.Whether it's thrashing the fastest ever Test century at Lord's or the quickest ever Test double-hundred by an Englishman (against South Africa at Cape Town, in January) or destroying the Australian batting at Trent Bridge, Stokes plays the game he loves with his heart on his sleeve and with 100% effort and commitment. Cricket fans adore him for it.His very first book focuses on the pivotal moments in his life and career so far. These episodes are vibrant, emotional, poignant - revealing the man in three dimensions, red in tooth and claw. From being forged as a young boy in New Zealand, to moving to Cumbria at the age of 11, to playing county cricket for Durham and then onto the England team, this book provides a riveting insight into one of the most exhilarating figures in sport today.

    Yet shortly after reaching those heights, he started to crumble, and famously left the 2012-13 Ashes tour of Australia suffering from a stress related illness. His story is the story of Team England - it encompasses the life-cycle of a team that started out united by ambition, went on to achieve some of the greatest days in the team's history but then, bodies and minds broken, fell apart amid acrimony.Having seen all of this from the inside, Jonathan's autobiography takes readers to the heart of the England dressing room, and to the heart of what it is to be a professional sportsman. Not only does it provide a unique perspective on a remarkably successful period in English cricket and its subsequent reversal, it also offers a fascinating insight into the rewards and risks faced as a sportsman carrying the hope and expectation of a team and a nation. And it's a salutary tale of the dangers pressure can bring in any walk of life, and the perils of piling unrealistic expecations on yourself.

    They were the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, a blue-collar bunch led by an unconventional coach, and they engineered what Sports Illustrated called the greatest sports moment of the twentieth century. Their “Miracle on Ice” has become a national fairy tale, but the real Cinderella story is even more remarkable. Wayne Coffey casts a fresh eye on this seminal sports event, giving readers an ice-level view of the amateurs who took on a Russian hockey juggernaut at the height of the Cold War. He details the unusual chemistry of the Americans—formulated by their fiercely determined coach, Herb Brooks—and seamlessly weaves portraits of the boys with the fluid action of the game itself. Coffey also traces the paths of the players and coaches since their stunning victory, examining how the Olympic events affected their lives.Told with warmth and an uncanny eye for detail, The Boys of Winter is an intimate, perceptive portrayal of one Friday night in Lake Placid and the enduring power of the extraordinary.Also available as an eBook

    and remarkable powers of concentration, Bobby memorized hundreds of chess books in several languages, and he was only 13 when he became the youngest chess master in U.S. history.   But his strange behavior started early.  In 1972, at the historic Cold War showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he faced Soviet champion Boris Spassky, Fischer made headlines with hundreds of petty demands that nearly ended the competition.  It was merely a prelude to what was to come. Arriving back in the United States to a hero’s welcome, Bobby was mobbed wherever he went—a figure as exotic and improbable as any American pop culture had yet produced.  No player of a mere “board game” had ever ascended to such heights.  Commercial sponsorship offers poured in, ultimately topping $10 million—but Bobby demurred.  Instead, he began tithing his limited money to an apocalyptic religion and devouring anti-Semitic literature.   After years of poverty and a stint living on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, Bobby remerged in 1992 to play Spassky in a multi-million dollar rematch—but the experience only deepened a paranoia that had formed years earlier when he came to believe that the Soviets wanted him dead for taking away “their” title.  When the dust settled, Bobby was a wanted man—transformed into an international fugitive because of his decision to play in Montenegro despite U.S. sanctions.  Fearing for his life, traveling with bodyguards, and wearing a long leather coat to ward off knife attacks, Bobby lived the life of a celebrity fugitive – one drawn increasingly to the bizarre.  Mafiosi, Nazis, odd attempts to breed an heir who could perpetuate his chess-genius DNA—all are woven into his late-life tapestry.  And yet, as Brady shows, the most notable irony of Bobby Fischer’s strange descent – which had reached full plummet by 2005 when he turned down yet another multi-million dollar payday—is that despite his incomprehensible behavior, there were many who remained fiercely loyal to him.  Why that was so is at least partly the subject of this book—one that at last answers the question: “Who was Bobby Fischer?”

    Aged 16, White was the youngest player to win the English Amateur Championship. At 18, he won the World Amateur title. By 1984, he's a professional success, married but not at all settled. He's the kind of man who goes out for a packet of cigarettes and comes home two weeks later. Gambling, women, marathon binges with showbiz friends like Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, have threatened the stability of his marriage. But somehow White has survived, to tell in candid detail, a most unusual, often outrageous story of a very sporting life.