Sadly, and more than a little ironically, William Hill don’t take bets on their Sports Book of the Year Award. But if they did, our money would probably be on either Eclipse or Feet of the Chameleon. Either way, there’s a few beauties here; well worth putting on the Christmas list. Here they are, with links through to Amazon (they’ve suspended their usual delivery charges by the way – free delivery for Christmas!).

Ring of Fire: the Inside Story of Valentino Rossi and MotoGPby Rick Broadbent (Bantam Press)
At a time when F1 is increasingly petrified by organisational squabbles, cheating scandals and on-track inaction, Ring of Fire depicts an insider’s view of the most thrilling and dangerous sports of all time: MotoGP.

Eclipse: the story of the Rogue, the Madam and the Horse that Changed Racingby Nicholas Clee (Bantam Press)
Apart from having a race named after him, Eplicse was a horse that went on to dominate the bloodstock market (95 per cent of horses racing today are descended from him). He was the eighteenth-century darling of the Sport of Kings. And yet his story begins with a meat salesman and an adventurer who frequented brothels.

Few books about horse racing actually win the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award (Seabiscuit is the only one that springs to mind); this could be a rare exception.

Confessions of a Rugby Mercenaryby John Daniell (Ebury Press)
The title promises hilarious seventies smut; the book delivers hard-knock tales of life as a professional rugby union player. “Mercenary” is perhaps a bit strong; “journeyman” would perhaps have been more accurate. And for “Confessions” read “unsurprising, dull tales”. But if unsurprising, dull tales of a rugby journeyman are your thing then you’re in for a treat. (And you probably play rugby. In fact, your name is probably John Daniell. Hi, John!)

Harold Larwood: the Authorized Biography of the World’s Fastest Bowlerby Duncan Hamilton (Quercus Publishing)
The world doesn’t really need another story of Larwood, the Nottinghamshire pit lad who proved the perfect foil/stooge (delete according to social class and political persuasion) for posh England captain Douglas Jardine in the controversial Bodyline Ashes tour of 1932-33.

But in the hands of Hamilton, the Nottinghamshire press lad who spent much of his career reporting on Larwood’s antics as he swept to league success and two European Cups before plunging into alcoholic mediocrity, this tale is bound to win the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award for 2007.

Hang on; I’m getting confused with Hamilton’s previous book about Brian Clough; a man whom Hamilton was supremely qualified to talk about given his unparalleled access to Old Big ‘Ead himself. Whether Hamilton can win the William Hill book award for a second time, given this is ground that has been raked over time and again and that Hamilton has no greater insight to Larwood than any other twenty-first century sports writer, remains to be seen.

Feet of the Chameleon: the Story of African Footballby Ian Hawkey (Portico)
Given that the FIFA World Cup will be held in Africa for the first time in 2010 this is a well-timed book and, like FIFA’s benefaction, long overdue. We know a lot about South American football (Uruguayans are dirty; Argies cheat; the Brazilians can do no wrong; gangsterism has ruined Colombia; the rest try hard, bless ‘em) and probably too much about European football; Hawkey’s book aims to redress the deficit in our knowledge of the game in the Dark Continent.

Possibly the most scholarly book on the shortlist and edged out Simon “Football Against The Enemy” Kuper’s Why England Lose: and Other Curious Phenomena Explained, suggesting a book of the highest quality.

Simple Goalkeeping Made Spectacular: A Riotous Footballing Memoir About the Loneliest Position on the Fieldby Graham Joyce (Mainstream)
Part memoir, part guide to playing goalie, this is an offbeat look at the position occupied by the footballer’s best friend: the keeper. One of those books that initially seem surplus to requirements (like a history of salt, or Colleen Rooney’s autobiography) but is crafted with such love between writer and subject that you can’t fail to be won over. It probably won’t win the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, but it will bring a little bit of joy to your life.

Enjoy!

See all Hill’s Booker odds here.

Hills cut Wolf Hall from 12/1 to 2/1 favourite after a string of large-ish bets (in book award betting terms, at least) were placed on Mantel’s book by “literary insiders”.

Does that mean the book can be backed as though defeat was out of the question? In short, no.

The Guardian’s Charlotte Higgins attributes Mantel’s steaming to favouritism to the respect Mantel, who has never won the Booker before, has within the publishing industry. She claims there is a feeling that Mantel will be chosen above previous winners like J M Coetzee, William Hill’s original favourite.

That’s all well and good, except that awards bestowed by judging panels don’t necessarily work like that.

Music’s Mercury Prize is a good example. In 2007, Arctic Monkeys and Dizzee Rascal – both previous winners of the award – were overlooked by the judges in favour of Klaxons. But it’s worth noting that so was the more populist Amy Winehouse and, last year, her fellow Brit School songstress Adele and perennial festival favourites British Sea Power, the Last Shadow Puppets and the massive Radiohead.

Plenty of people would have loved to see Radiohead win the award, judged on their career as a whole. But judging panels are a funny, idiosyncratic lot, and they gave the 2008 Mercury Prize to the frankly awful Elbow instead.

Mantel winning would be akin to Sebastian Barry, who for a time was last year’s Booker favourite, winning this year. As it was, Aravind Adiga – originally a 14/1 shot – won the 2008 Booker Prize.

It’s a wide-open longlist again this year, and it’s probably wise to read the books in question – rather than blindly back your favourite author – and make a judgement based on your own idiosyncrasies and preferences.

That’s what the judges will be doing come December.

These are just a few of the questions answered by A Social History of English Cricketby Derek Birley. The answer usually given by this book, the winner of the 1999 William Hill Sports Book of the Year award, is simply that cricket organised itself so as to be “not football”.

Cricket: it’s not football
If football did it, cricket’s ruling body decreed that it was probably urban (and hence bad), almost certainly working class (and hence bad), possibly popular (and hence bad) and potentially profitable (and hence tantamount to devil worship).

From its very beginnings, where gambling-mad gentry folk paid big-hitting farmers to turn out for the cricket teams they and their friends played in as amateurs, cricket defined itself as a rural, genteel and elitist game that would have no truck with the vulgarities of money.

Thus cricket emerged as a social and financial basket case: it refused to succumb to the professionalism that had sullied the northern rugby and association football codes; its leagues were made up of county (ie, rural) teams, and its games were played during the week and, even in the age of floodlights, during the day.

Nobody watched it, which proved to the MCC – the game’s ruling body for most of its history – that things were going well: no fans meant no football fans. Result.

MCC: delusional
Their obsession with doing whatever football seems simply delusional at times: the MCC refused to organise the County Championship on league lines until well into the twentieth century and clubs could organise their own fixtures.

Counties could just arrange to play as weak opposition as possible all season, and the club with the best record won the Championship. Even winning was discouraged (the taking part being the thing that counted). And so the fact – incomprehensible to non-cricketers – that a game could be played for longer than a week (in the days before Tests were limited to five days) and still end up as a draw.

Other book reviews of Birley’s Social History have complained that it offers a “lefty” view that criticises the sport’s gloriously genteel heritage.

But I’d ask those reviewers to point to a time when county cricket ever got big crowds, or was financially viable. It never has and never did, and romanticising rural cricket is based purely on a fictional myth.

The MCC couldn’t maintain the myth, of course. In the urban centres of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and London – still home to the principle Test venues today - thriving leagues emerged with professional players, Saturday one-day games and, hence, good crowds and profitable businesses.

And ultimately the hated market forces won. Amateurism is long gone and cricket is now dominated by one-day games, 20Twenty and tournaments like the IPL. The top players aren’t even employed by county sides, but centrally contracted to international boards or independent bodies like the IPL.

Some might say thank God – had Cricket stuck to being everything football wasn’t, it might not exist today.

Birley is a bit sketchy on details – I couldn’t tell you exactly when the County Championship became a proper league, because he doesn’t say, and it’s often difficult to follow events chronologically – but A Social History of English Cricketis a decent attempt to explode English cricket’s defining – and entirely fictional – myth.

Netherland, with its story about oil investors and cricket in post-9/11 New York, pips Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence to favouritism. Rushdie’s novel is a 4/1 shot.

Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 is 6/1 third-favourite. Smith’s thriller was a heavy favourite to win the Desmond Elliott book award earlier this year, although that gong that subsequently went to Nikita Lalwani for Gifted.

The rest of the card reads:

8/1 Sebastian Barry – The Secret Scripture
8/1 Linda Grant – The Clothes on Their Backs
10/1 Mohammed Hanif – A Case of Exploding Mangoes
10/1 Amite Gosh – Sea of Poppies
14/1 Arvin Amiga – The White Tiger
14/1 Michelle de Kreutzer – The Lost Dog
16/1 John Berger – From A to X
16/1 Steve Toltz – A Fraction of the Whole
20/1 Gaynor Arnold – Girl in a Blue Dress

Hill’s spokesman Graham Sharpe said, “Although Salman Rushdie is the man in form having won the Booker of Bookers, that book is now over 20 years old and his recent work has not been winning literary awards.

“Joseph O’Neill’s novel Netherland has been creating a real buzz and is also being suggested as the first novel to become a serious contender for the “Bookie Prize” – the William Hill Sports Book of the Year – and for that reason we believe it is a worthy favourite.”

You’ve got to get your bets in quick, says William Hill – because as soon as the winner is known, they’re likely to stop betting on the award.

One report reads into Hills’ admission that “the winners of events [like] the Oscars and the Booker Prize … are often decided days in advance”.

Spokeswoman Jennie Prest said, “If a market is decided by a judging panel somewhere then they could have decided four or five days before the award is presented”.

Hills recently carried on accepting bets on the “Best of the Booker Awards” up to the day of the presentation event – even though Salman Rushdie, the eventual winner, was trading at odds of up to 1/30 (30-1 on) on betting exchange Betfair.

However, they have previously had to close the book on Booker Award betting because a surge in relatively big-money bets has suggested the eventual winner has become known.

In 2002 they had to stop taking bets after the Booker winner was inadvertently announced on the organisation’s website a day before the literary prize was awarded.