Despite having not laced his bowling boots since 1989, it remains a fitting sobriquet. As a commentator and administrator, Holding has delivered his views on cricket in the same manner that he played the game: he speaks softly with a rich Jamaican rhythm and is calculated in either criticism or compliment. This book charts his effortless transition from one of the great players to one of the great pundits. Holding graphically describes his days as a player, looking back at how he tried to deliberately hurt batsmen on the wastelands of Kingston and his first match for Jamaica when he almost collapsed from exhaustionafter only four overs!He alsodivulges what it was like to tour with West Indies, and sharesunmissable insights about sharing a dressing room with other legends of the game like Sir Clive Lloyd, Sir Viv Richards, and Malcolm Marshall.Holding does not shirk the bigissuesheexplores why West Indies have slipped following their halcyon days, openly assesses Brian Lara, and laments the hypocrisy over the state of the game in the region. The controversy surrounding the Allen Stanford $20m spectacle, the ICC's handling of the abandoned England vs. Pakistan match, player power, illegal bowling actions, and the threat of Twenty20 to the Test game are all subjects which Holding tackles with knowledge and class."

    The inside story of Bradley Wiggins's record-breaking rideFor 60 minutes this summer, the British public stopped what they were doing, switched on their radios, their TVs, refreshed their Twitter feeds and followed Bradley Wiggins’s attempt to break one of sport’s most gruelling records: The Hour.The premise is simple enough: how far can you cycle in one hour. But it is thought to be one of the toughest events an athlete can endure, both physically and psychologically. Eddy Merckx, cycling’s über-champ, called it the hardest thing he ever did. Wiggins, like many before him, discovered the unique pain of pushing yourself as hard as you can for 60 minutes.In this revealing book, Bradley Wiggins takes you behind the scenes of his record attempt. From planning to preparation, to training to execution, Bradley shares his thoughts on his sacrifices, his heroes, and the people who have supported him along the way as well as what’s to come as he heads towards the twilight of his stellar career.Supported by stunning photography, My Hour is a fitting celebration of one of Britain’s best-loved sportsmen in his finest hour.

    The game has been his life, and his enduring passion.Souness has written a perceptive and opinionated autobiography. It chronicles one of the most successful and colourful careers in the history of British football. But it also provides an intriguing assessment of the game which has dominated his existence, drawing extensively on his incredibly rich and varied experiences as a player, manager and pundit.The result is a shrewd, incisive and hard-hitting memoir, at times tinged with hindsight and regret, which also grapples with many of the major talking points affecting the game today. It is shot through with Souness' trademark tenacity and wisdom, and with fantastic anecdotes from his glittering career.In many ways, Football: My Life, My Passion is the story of the last half-century of British football writ large.

    This wonderful new book takes fans into the changing room, the training ground and the boardroom. Warnock draws heavily on a lifetime of experiences at all levels in football, but particularly on his tumultuous spells at Crystal Palace, Queens Park Rangers, and Leeds United. From transfer dealings to negotiations with agents, from half-time team-talks to training sessions, from scouting trips to team-bonding sprees, from administrators to chairman, from injuries to referees - The Gaffer spills the beans.You won't have read a football book like this before.

    And the batting prodigy they nicknamed 'Pup' certainly fulfilled his destiny in a stellar 11-year international career of 115 Tests, 8643 runs and 28 centuries.Clarke's rollercoaster four-year reign as Test captain was marked as much by bravery as brilliance - a 5-0 whitewash of England in 2013-14, the 2015 World Cup triumph, and a ten-hour unbeaten 161, batting with a broken shoulder to lead Australia back to the #1 world ranking in 2014.Yet Michael Clarke also sparked fiercer debate than any other Australian sports star.For a decade his personal life, career fortunes and controversies - real or imagined - were splashed across front pages and scrutinised. Was he simply a hard-working, western suburbs kid living every Aussie boy's dream? Or a 21st century cricketer mired in all the trappings of celebrity?In the echo chamber of social media, the truth about Michael Clarke was warped, then lost. Clarke's enigma deepened but he kept his mouth shut and his dignity intact, knowing the chance to tell his extraordinary story would finally come. And now it has.My Story is the real Michael Clarke, standing up and speaking out for the first time.Bucking the conventions of traditional biography to go hard at the big issues, Clarke speaks fearlessly and poignantly about the scandals, rumours and explosive moments of his life; revealing the amazing truths, private pain and personal triumphs that no one realised.It's the incredible story of a remarkable Australian you never really knew. Until now.

    This book describes the 1994-5 season at Charlton Athletic but it could be any in which he reveals the ups and downs of what it is like to be an ordinary professional player.There are the injuries, the battles for selection, and the worries that age is catching up on him, which would mean the end of his career. But there are also the occasional triumphs, such as when he was appointed captain and scored the winning goal in a televised match.Written with wit, intelligence and insight, Left Foot Forward reveals far more about what it is really like to be a footballer than any number of ghosted autobiographies by the big stars. It is destined to become a classic of football writing.

    A tall, lean striker with the world at his feet, Ferguson seemed destined to develop into one of Scotland's most successful exports, but anger, and a number of injuries, hampered his progress. Ferguson has scored the most goals of any Scot in the Premiership but also shares the record for Premiership red cards. In 1995, he became the first professional footballer to be jailed for an offence committed on the pitch. It earned him a three-month sentence in Glasgow's infamous Barlinnie Prison and a twelve-match ban from the SFA. Bruised by the experience, he walked away from the Scotland team and blanked the media from then on. Featuring contributions from numerous top players, this explosive biography uncovers the real Duncan Ferguson. The author delves into Ferguson's personal and professional life and reveals that there is more to him than the media portrayal of a Scottish hard man.

    A devout Catholic, and a ruthless on-field sledger. A brutal enforcer, and a soft-hearted family man. The Australian record-holder for highest score in Tests and One Day Internationals, who was plagued by insecurities. In STANDING MY GROUND Hayden confronts these contradictions head-on. He talks frankly about the forces that shaped his journey from fringe international to a giant of the game. He dissects Australia's tactic of verbal warfare and his own role as a key aggressor, taking us on a privileged tour inside the sporting machine that dominated all comers in a golden age of Australian cricket. This isn't a predictable ball-by-ball account of a stellar career. Instead, Hayden delivers a characteristically direct assessment of the matches and the people that mattered most. He pays homage to great role models like Allan Border and explains his deep connection to controversial Andrew Symonds, but also reveals colourful clashes along the way. He opens up on umpires, the media, superstitions, teammates and opponents with disarming honesty and humour. The country boy from Kingaroy rose to greatness in the cricket world. Here is the superstar batsman, the surfer, fisherman and chef in a book as bold and powerful as the man himself.

    This is what football is really about. One man’s story of a career in the lower leagues.Chris Hargreaves has been a professional footballer for twenty years. Having started out as a youth team player at Everton he made his debut for Grimsby Town in 1989 and was earmarked as their first million pound sale.It never happened.Instead he went on to play for Scarborough, Hull City, West Brom, Hereford United, Plymouth Argyle, Northampton Town, Brentford, Oxford United and Torquay United.Where's Your Caravan? is the sort of football memoir we don't see enough of these days - an account of life in the lower leagues. It takes us from his wild youth - lots of sex and drugs and drink - through to domesticated family man - school runs and flatpack furniture with plenty of football in between.

    His characteristically patrician tones, overlaid with those of the bon viveur, have delighted listeners to the BBC's Test Match Special where the personality of the broadcaster comes second only to a deep knowledge of the game and its players. With his engaging conversational tone it is easy to see why listeners feel as if they are actually at the Test match watching in Henry's friendly company. Now that 'Blowers' has decided to declare his TMS innings closed, his book reveals the secrets of life in the commentary box and of the rich cast of characters with whom he shared it, from the early days of John Arlott and Brian Johnson to Aggers and new boys Boycott, Swann, Vaughan and Tuffers. Henry is equally revealing of his own performances and self-deprecatingly recalls his several verbal misfortunes while live broadcasting. Like the greatest commentators and writers on the game Blofeld has always understood that there is a world beyond the cricket field. Not forgetting pigeons passing, red buses and much loved cricket grounds, Henry Blofeld writes of his favourite countries, and experiences while travelling, and meeting and interviewing many cricket-loving celebrities. His passionate and entertaining book will become one of the classics of cricket's literature.

    He's been part of five premierships: three as a player at Essendon, where he was coached by the best, and two at Geelong, where he coached that club's greatest team of all. He exited the game amid the Essendon supplements scandal with unfinished business. After 34 years 'at a thousand kilometres an hour', Thompson has taken the opportunity to reflect on the game that shaped him and to reveal the personal cost of his involvement at the top level. We ride the bumps of the coaches' box, the boardroom and the press conferences as Mark Thompson handles things his own way. He talks about his mentors, his proteges and contemporaries with insight and candour. And he reveals the development of what became his trademark as a successful coach: building a team from the ground up to play defence-first accountable footy, with kamikaze ball movement, under a teacher-mentor relationship. This is as good a book about football as you'll get, from a purist who is not interested in the politics of the AFL. His legacy is some of the greatest footy to be played in the modern era. 'I hate group-think, it's just not my style. I have never been part of any boy's club in footy. I have been an independent going right back to my youth ...I make no apologies for saying what I think. It is my story, after all.'

    Many people have told his story incorrectly, and many rumors have surfaced about his life. After years of research we can present this telling of his life story, setting the record straight and giving you a warm, funny and even tragic insight in to the man behind Albert Steptoe.

    This is it. This is really the end. I was now a matter of seconds away from the moment all the numbers stopped for ever. My career total of National Hunt winners would remain at 4,348 after this, my 17,546th ride. All the stats, the numbers that had governed my life for the last two decades, they were just a few hundred yards from being stilled for ever. My whole career, my whole adult life, had been built on making those numbers click upwards as fast as I could, but in a couple of furlongs they would never move again.Deciding to retire was the most difficult decision I've ever had to make. Fortunately I was able to go out at the very top, and being able to say that makes me a very, very lucky man indeed. And now, in this book, I've been able to look back over my entire career - both good and bad moments - and see it in its entirety: the biggest wins, the disappointments, the injuries and the tragedies, my wonderful family, and the amazing horses and the fantastic personalities I've worked with.18,000 people turned up to that final race at Sandown, and I can now look back on my career with immense pride and gratitude. But that chapter of my life is closed. This book is the final word on my riding career - it's time to move forward.

    That same year, he finished third on the Big Wave World Tour, despite only surfing three of the five events. Chris’s mantra is Dream it, See it, Believe it, Achieve it. With his infectious enthusiasm, Chris tells how he pulled off death-defying antics, time and again, overcame overwhelming obstacles and manoeuvred around the many random twists of fate to achieve his goals and fulfil his dreams.

    As the only English football captain ever to raise the World Cup, he was not just a football icon but a national one.Yet Bobby was an intensely reserved, almost mysterious personality. Only one person was his true friend and confidante – his boyhood sweetheart, Tina, whom he met at 17 and married soon after.Tina Moore’s story of her life with Bobby, the triumphs and crises of his football career, the break-up of their marriage and what happened afterwards, is a moving tribute to a national icon by the person who knew him better than anyone.