BOOKS OF THE YEAR
Roger Federer: The Biography By René Stauffer
Becoming Forrest: The Extraordinary Story Of One Man’s Epic Run Across The Usa By Rob Pope
Not Out at Close of Play: A Life in Cricket by Dennis Amiss with James Graham-Brown
Fringes: Life On The Edge Of Professional Rugby By Ben Mercer
Part II of our review of the best sports books of the year…
Roger Federer’s biography opens in the wake of his defeat to Novak Djokovic in the 2019 Wimbledon final, the longest in history. Five gruelling sets over five hours saw the Swiss falter despite having two championship points. His reaction afterwards sums the man up. “I’m annoyed,” he said, “but you have to look forward, forget about it and take good things from it…I don’t want to be depressed for too long because of a great tennis match.”
René Stauffer’s updated biography has revised parts of his original, completely re-written other aspects and added great swathes of new material to create the definitive tale of male tennis’s greatest exponent.
By contrast, Becoming Forrest proves that books recording extraordinary examples of sporting prowess do not require a wellknown superstar to be centre stage. Author Rob Pope had run “a few” marathons and one ultra-marathon but he was hardly a household name before he embarked on a journey of more than 15,600 miles.
Conscious of his mother’s wish, to “Do one thing in your life that makes a difference,” Pope decided to tackle the USA in the style of Forrest Gump who, in the movie, took three years to complete a similarly lengthy trip.
Inspired by his late mother’s words, he presents readers with an outstanding mixture of travelogue and extraordinary endurance.
Talking of endurance, between 1960-87, Dennis Amiss played 658 first class cricket matches, amassing more than 43,000 runs. Incredibly, he scored a century once every six-and-a-half matches. Author James Graham-Brown, who played cricket for Kent and Derbyshire, offers readers an engaging overview of a unique life involved in sport and observed from several perspectives, as a player and administrator.
Finally, Ben Mercer is not a rugby superstar. He spent time at Bath’s respected academy, although he never made it into the senior XV, sidelining his burgeoning rugby career to read English Literature at Newcastle Uni. Upon graduation, he returned to the professional game, this time at Plymouth, in the English second division.
He has written a no-frills tale of life near the foot of the professional pyramid, a place where earning a livelihood is determined as much by steering clear of injury as it is by playing well. In many respects it’s as gritty as the 1963 film, This Sporting Life, only Mercer lives it for real.
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