From Pringle’s women troubles to Berlin 1936 . . .

Simon Briggs delves beneath the dust covers to reveal the best sports books of the year just in time for Christmas

Autobiography of the year Pushing the Boundaries, by Derek Pringle

Sample sentence: Juggling four women over the 12 days we were in Perth did not come naturally to a dilettante like me, however, and unsurprisingly it ended in tears

As a cricketer, Derek Pringle bumbled through a career that never quite delivered on its enormous promise. Now we know what he was really up to: collecting an Aladdin’s cave of anecdotes, quips and sledges for his autobiography.

Apart from the insight into all the 1980s giants, Ian Botham, David Gower, Allan Lamb, etc, this book manages a feat rarely achieved on the sports shelves: it is effortlessly funny.

Boxing book of the year The Lost Soul of Eamonn Magee, by Paul Gibson

Sample sentence: By the late 1980s Doc was struggling badly with the drink

Eamonn Magee won the World

Boxing Union welterweight title in 2003, but the focus here is more on his involvement with Na Fianna Eireann (the IRA junior wing) and his prodigious drinking, which makes Shane Macgowan look like a temperance campaigner.

All the toxic masculinity got me down. If it is your bag, though, author Paul Gibson delivers a vivid journey into the dark heart.

Football book of the year The Boy on the Shed, by Paul Ferris

Sample sentence: Where once players like John Barnes would sit and argue the hot topics of the day, there was now a new breed, a new animal in the [treatment] room

Another tale forged in the Troubles, if one with a more uplifting outcome.

At 16, Ferris left his native Lisburn, a Belfast backwater, to become the youngest player capped by Newcastle United. But his career collapsed, almost as soon as it had started, amid a welter of injuries. From there, he became a physio, a trainee barrister, a businessman and now a first-rate writer.

Featuring cameos from a host of Toon legends, The Boy on the Shed has enough depth and humanity to make your average football autobiography look like a Ladybird book.

History book of the year Berlin 1936: Sixteen Days in August, by Oliver Hilmes

Sample sentence:

When Joseph Goebbels sees him [International Olympic Committee president Henri de Baillet-latour], the German propaganda minister can only shake his head, later noting in his diary: The Olympians look like the directors of a flea circus

A masterpiece, and a highly original one, too. Hitler’s notorious 1936 Olympics are only the starting point for a detailed evocation of an era. Reading Berlin 1936 is phenomenally immersive.

You feel like you are dancing in the Quartier Latin, eating canard a la rouennaise in the world-famous Horcher restaurant, or enjoying an afternoon cognac with the flaneurs on Kurfurstendamm.

Meanwhile, the great athletes of the day, Jesse Owens, Konrad Frey, Eleanor Holm Jarrett, spin past in a glamorous, doomed waltz.

Cycling book of the year The Tour According to G, by Geraint Thomas

Sample sentence: It had been a demolition derby of a stage, skinny bodies left scattered across the Jura mountains

Surprisingly, cycling books sell better than those about any other sport bar football. And this year, best bet for the MAMIL (middleaged man in Lycra) in your life is Geraint Thomas’s stage-by-stage account of his maiden Tour de France crown.

There is nothing revolutionary in here, just a detailed analysis of cycling minutiae: how to ride on cobbles, how to cope with a crosswind, how not to upset the peculiar ecology of the peloton. One of two entries in our list ghostwritten by the indefatigable Tom Fordyce.

Cricket book of the year England: the Biography, by Simon Wilde

Sample sentence: The Nawab of Pataudi initially refused to field in the leg trap

Simon Wilde has already written 11 cricket books. Here, he distils all that expertise into one massive, 614-page tome.

It is not a chronological history, but a themed portrait of the English game, beginning with the Gentlemen v Players divide and ending with a chapter entitled “Strauss White Ball Revolution: how England one-day batsmen found their muscle”. At once dauntingly comprehensive and surprisingly light-footed.

Schadenfreude of the year Crossing the Line, by Gideon Haigh

Sample sentence: It was as crass as Boris Onischenko’s epee, the Harlequins blood capsules

Has there been a more memorable sports story this year than the Australian ball-tampering fiasco? As one of the world’s finest sportswriters, Haigh could simply have chronicled events in his own words. But he goes much further, interviewing 50 men and women of influence in his own cultural review of the sport in Australia. The result is both forensic and scathing.

Rugby book of the year Sevens Heaven: The Beautiful Chaos of Fiji’s Olympic Dream, by Ben Ryan

Sample sentence: My car was not a flash one, but as one of the few ginger white men in Fiji it never took me long to be recognised

This really is a joy. Perhaps I am biased, having been present in Rio to see the Fijians sprint and tackle their way to gold: the first Olympic medals ever claimed by these tiny islands. But how can you not warm to a rugby team whose players begin each day with lotu –a hymn-singing, bear-hugging get-together – and have been known to skip training because of a witch doctor curse? Ben Ryan, the English coach who took on this gifted but ragtag bunch in 2013, immerses himself in the culture. His ghostwriter, Tom Fordyce, conveys it all in agile prose. I swallowed it up in two sittings.

Personal journey of the year Chasing Points, by Greg Howe

Sample sentence: When someone else joined me on the exercise bikes, I looked across to see [Andy] Murray

Club players of a certain standard always wonder how they would fare against the pros. Howe decided to quit his job (he was an English teacher at a north London school) and find out.

His odyssey around tennis’s most obscure venues: Carthage, Mombasa, Riyadh, has plenty of charm and piquancy.

Towards the end, he graduates to the main tour, and a locker room full of millionaire athletes in Dubai. One for the dreamers.

Biography of the year Tiger Woods, by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian

Sample sentence: The Champ had gone from no girlfriend to a blonde bombshell

After reading Hank Haney’s The Big Miss, I thought the definitive work on Woods had been written. I was wrong.

In this phenomenally detailed biography, the authors wriggle their way through all the locks and bars and non-disclosure agreements that Woods has thrown up around himself to reveal a flawed human being, but one who is surprisingly easy to identify with.

Tennis book of the year Driven: a Daughter’s Odyssey, by Julie Heldman

Sample sentence: Bring me my scotch!! Mom bellows

Julie Heldman would be interesting enough on her own, a former world No5 who filled a variety of roles after her retirement, from commentating to running a spectacle manufacturer. But the real star here is her domineering, alcoholic mother, Gladys, who was the unsung heroine behind the foundation of the women’s tour. In this season of goodwill, Driven offers a reminder that there is no family as dysfunctional as a tennis family.

Head-on: Both the flaws and engaging qualities of Tiger Woods are revealed in minute detail in a new biography