Great Sporting Books

Sports Books: Open - Andre Agassi, Fever Pitch – Nick Hornby, Great Cricket MatchesBook In take a look at three books on sport. Open is the autobiography of Andre Agassi: one of the greatest players of all time, Agassi was driven by his domineering father to hit 2,500 balls a day from the age of 5, and at 13 was sent to the Nick Bolliteri Tennis Academy in Florida, essentially a boot camp for teenage tennis prodigies. By 18, he was in the world’s top 10 and won three Grand Slams but the wheels came off in his mid 20s as his partying life caught up with him and he descended to 141 in the world. His subsequent comeback and further success is one of the great redemption stories in sport, and he tells the story in his compelling and brilliant book, Open. Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch was the book which charted, and perhaps partly caused, the transformation of football from the muddy pitches and hooligan supporters of the 1970s and 1980s to the cool, fashionable, sophisticated product it is today. Through accounts of specific matches involving his beloved Arsenal FC, Hornby charts his own childhood and adolescence and sets them in the context of the social and economic changes occurring in Britain at the time. Funny, wide ranging and a little bit nerdy, it is a brilliant account of growing up in the UK in the transformative years of the late 20th century. Cricket has produced some great literature over the years; Great Cricket Matches is a collection of accounts written by various writers and was given to Rupert as a child. He selects three pieces from it which he has always loved and shares them with Charlie and the Book In audience.