January’s Vote: New Beginnings
Welcome to The Podium: A Sports Book Club. Before I get stuck in, if you hadn’t worked it out already this this isn’t a betting website! It’s a bookclub.
January is a busy month for sports but I thought we should keep it pretty friendly and find a book everybody would be interested in reading. I’ve gone as safe as possible choosing American Football, Cricket, Cycling, Soccer and Tennis.
Below are January’s 5 books. Make sure to vote at the bottom of the page. The results will be revealed on the 7th. Hopefully that will give you enough time to go out and purchase the book and read it before the end of the month.
Resurrection: The Miracle Season That Saved Notre Dame by Jim Dent
Dent interviewed Parseghian as well as many of the surviving players and painstakingly researched the newspaper and national press coverage the team received during its Phoenix-like resurrection. The genuinely engaging game accounts—usually momentum killers in sports books—are peppered with specific player memories that add urgency and excitement…we have an inspirational underdog saga, humor, pathos, tragedy, and triumph. – Booklist
On January 7th 2013, Notre Dame could claim their first BSC National Championship since 1988 when they face 2011 and 2009 BCS National Championship Alabama Crimson Tide in Miami Gardens, Florida.
Resurrection by Jim Dent tells the story of Notre Dame in a completely different scenario to the current setup.
Back in the 1960s, Notre Dame’s football program was in shambles. For five straight years, from 1958 through 1963, the home of Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy could not produce one winning season. Plagued by a series of bad coaching choices, inept management, and a loss of institutional support, no one could be sure if the Fighting Irish would ever return to glory. When “Touchdown Jesus” was erected in 1964, it presided over a team so hopeless that the entire football program was on the brink of collapse. – Book Description, Amazon.com
Notre Dam Vs Alabama Crimson Tide – January 7th
On Amazon.com
Feet of the Chameleon: The Story of African Football by Ian Hawkey
‘Feet of the Chameleon is joyful, and will appeal as much to those interested in the history and geography of Africa as it will to aficionados of the sport’, The Financial Times
There are more African footballers playing globally than ever before, be it in the English Premier League, Chinese Super League or Russian Premier League. In 2010, South Africa hosted the the world’s biggest soccer competition, The FIFA World Cup. Now this January it hosts the important African Cup of Nations.
Winner of the Best Football Book at the British Sports Book Awards 2010 and shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2009, this is the definitive book on African football. The author traces the development of the world’s favourite sport through the tangled history and complex social and political life of this fascinating continent. Drawing on his own extensive experience, years of research and interviews with those involved in all levels of the African game, Ian Hawkey has crafted a remarkable book to satisfy the surge of interest in African football. - Book Description Amazon.co.uk
African Cup of Nations – 19th January to 10th February
On Amazon.co.uk
Twirlymen: The Unlikely History of Cricket’s Greatest Spin Bowlers by Amol Rajan
‘If I’ve persuaded you to buy his book, and I hope I have, here is one word of warning: do not read it in the vicinity of any vases, glasses or other breakables. Rajan provides detailed diagrams explaining how to grip all the spinner’s deliveries, from the doosra to the googly and everything in between. You will want to read this holding the book in your left hand and a cricket ball in your right. My attempts to replicate Ajantha Mendis’s carom ball have already cost me two teacups.’ Andy Bull, The Guardian
With an enormous amount of cricket fixtures being played this month, especially 20 – 20 cricket, I felt we should pay tribute to some of the great fast bowlers and the history of fast bowling. I’ll admit I know nothing about cricket but that’s half the fun of The Podium.
They are the masters of deception, the jokers in the pack; illusionists conjuring wickets out of thin air with nothing more than an ambled approach and a wonky grip. Not for them the brutish physicality of the pace bowler nor the reactive slogging of the batsman. Theirs is a more cerebral art. They stand alone in a team sport. They are Twirlymen.
Having himself failed through a combination of injury and indolence to become a leg-spinner of renown Amol Rajan pays homage to that most eccentric of all sporting heroes – the spin bowler. On a journey through cricket history Rajan introduces us to the greatest purveyors of that craft, from W. G. Grace to Graeme Swann via Clarrie Grimmet’s flipper, Muttiah Muralitharan’s helicopter wrist, Shane Warne’s ball-of-the-century and all the rest. - Book Description, Amazon.co.uk
January Cricket Fixtures via CricSchedule
On Amazon.co.uk
Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi
‘Agassi may have just penned one of the best sports autobiographies of all time. Check—it’s one of the better memoirs out there, period. . . . An unvarnished, at times inspiring story [told] in an arresting, muscular style. . . . Agassi’s memoir is just as entrancing as his tennis game.’ Time
As the tennis season starts with the first major this month in Australia I thought it would be quite fitting to include Andre Agassi’s autobiography Open. Agassi’s book has received mass praise around the world and this year marks the 10 year anniversary of his last Grand Slam victory and, yep, you quessed it, it was the Australian Open (in 2003).
Agassi makes us feel his panic as an undersized seven-year-old in Las Vegas, practicing all day under the obsessive gaze of his violent father. We see him at thirteen, banished to a Florida tennis camp. Lonely, scared, a ninth-grade dropout, he rebels in ways that will soon make him a 1980s icon. By the time he turns pro at sixteen, his new look promises to change tennis forever, as does his lightning fast return.
And yet, despite his raw talent, he struggles early on. We feel his confusion as he loses to the world’s best, his greater confusion as he starts to win. After stumbling in three Grand Slam finals, Agassi shocks the world, and himself, by capturing the 1992 Wimbledon. Overnight he becomes a fan favorite and a media target. – Book Description, Amazon.co.uk
Australian Open January 14th – 24th.
On Amazon.com
The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs by Tyler Hamilton
‘Brilliantly detailed and wholly convincing: with Coyle’s skill and Hamilton’s honesty, the book was always likely to be excellent. This is no generalised or theoretical exploration of a doping culture but a forensic description of how it worked. Armstrong used to say there would always be sceptics who didn’t believe in his story, but now the sceptics are those who, ostrich-like, continue to believe.’ David Walsh Sunday Times
There’s a lot being said about cycling at the moment and with The Tour Down Under coming up there’s sure to be more speculation and accusations thrown at athletes.
Tyler Hamilton’s book The Secret Race picked up William Hill Sports Book of the Year. Hamilton was a team-mate of Lance Armstrong on the US Postal Service cycling team during the 1999, 2000 and 2001 Tours de France and was later himself banned from cycling after being found guilty of doping.
Everyone interested in learning more about a sport with a long-running doping history (culture?) should read Hamilton’s book.
The Tour Down Under 20-27 January
Cast Your Vote now for January’s Book
What’s your thoughts on the books selected for this month? Will you be joining in?