Exposés, entertainment ... and cook books

Players
Peter English wrote recently: "The sterilised age preventing sportspeople from sprouting not much more than corporate spin should be forcing the end of dreary ghosted autobiographies. Instead books with little worth to subject or reader are popping up like springtime flowers and hundreds of pages are devoted to great team-mates, superb wins and important challenges." This year was no different.

Among the better offerings was Roy: Going for Broke by Andrew Symonds (with Stephen Gray), a book that is "so revealing for a high-profile figure it should almost carry 'unauthorised' in the title".

Equally honest is John Wright's Indian Summers, the autobiography of the former New Zealand batsman and India coach. "This could well be the single most important book written by someone intimately involved in Indian cricket since Sunil Gavaskar wrote Sunny Days back in 1977, when he was still a player."

So much of Kevin Pietersen: Crossing the Boundary was serialised in the newspapers that by the time of its publication it seemed to be more of a collection of articles than a book. It contained enough controversy to be interesting - especially to the South African board who complained over various comments - but if you are looking for humility, don't hold your breath.

Undoubtedly the heavyweight book of the year was Steve Waugh's Out of My Comfort Zone: The Autobiography - 801 pages and 1.9 kgs heavy. "He writes like he batted, seemingly in thrall to the idea that the man with the most pages wins. Unable to determine what is important, he has convinced himself that everything is." It's a strong person who can even lift it, let alone reach the end.

At the other end of the scale are the cash-ins, books with the sole aim of getting you to part with your money on the basis of a glossy cover and a famous name. There were two of these which polluted 2006. One, Keith Miller: the Life of a Great All-rounder by Roland Perry (who David Frith described as "an opportunist author") was a clinical dissection of an Australian legend that was "strewn with errors that undermine confidence in the work as a whole". Such lack of attention to details made its unsavoury dredging of Miller's private life even less palatable.

The other was Paul Barry's Spun Out a tabloid expose of Shane Warne, and all done without any access to the player himself, who Barry only spoke to - very briefly - once. It needed "more than a kitbag of nameless sources and industrious scanning of back copies of women's magazines, News of the World and Warne's previous autobiographies and columns". As Peter English noted, it was a cricket book but not a book about cricket.

© Tempus Publishing Ltd

Lavish
Given India's near obsession with cricket, there are surprisingly few books released for that market each year. One which is a must-have, and not only for the Indian supporter, was The Illustrated History of Indian Cricket by Boria Majumdar. "This is an extraordinary work of scholarship masquerading as a coffee-table flick-book. A sticky-dog century condensed to a ten-over slog, yet somehow retaining the virtues of each."

The Ashes
It's hard for English supporters to remember now, but the prospect of the Ashes actually caused a fair amount of excitement until it got underway and the harsh reality soon hit home. The usual avalanche of pre-series rush releases contained a few gems. The pick was Stiff Upper Lips and Baggy Green Caps by Simon Briggs, which took the dry subject of a history of the Ashes and made it readable and entertaining. Gideon Haigh's The Book of Ashes Anecdotes was also worth a read as he opted to stray from the familiar quotes in favour of more interesting and less worn utterances.

Reference
Arm-Ball To Zooter by Lawrence Booth (who will be familiar to readers of his Spin offering for The Guardian) tackles the game's unique language in an entertaining and often very amusing way. There are several books that cover the same area, but they almost all take themselves far too seriously ... there is never a chance of Booth falling into that trap.

The staple favourites of the Playfair Cricket Annual and Wisden were joined in October by Cricinfo Guide To International Cricket edited by Steven Lynch (of Ask Steven fame). Yes, it has a Cricinfo tag, but this is the first major publication aimed at the global market (it has different covers for the UK, India and Australia) with in-depth profiles of all the main squads for the 10 Test-playing nations.

Why Bother?
It must have seemed like a good idea to someone, but what was the point of The Glenn McGrath Barbecue Cookbook? Well, probably to flog sponsored products which seem to crop up with alarming regularity in recipes. Great fast bowler, utterly forgettable book.