THE 18-BOOK LONGLIST for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award for 2023 features 13 sports and two fiction novels, with double the number of female authors in the running for the £30,000 (€34,640) top prize.

Books about squash, surfing and swimming are among the contenders, while snooker legend Ronnie O’Sullivan’s has also been nominated for his memoir, Unbreakable.

So too has three-time previous winner Duncan Hamilton for his account of England’s 1966 World Cup win, Answered Prayers, while football writer Nooruddean Choudry — known to many by his longtime Twitter alias, Bearded Genius — is also among the nominees for Inshallah United: A Story of Faith and Football.

Six books written or co-written by female authors make the 18-strong list, including Sally H. Jacobs’ Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson which chronicles a long-overlooked American sporting great.

Chetna Maroo’s Western Lane, a coming-of-age story about a young squash player, is one of two nominated fiction novels. The other is Kathryn Scanlan’s Kick The Latch, a novel about a horse trainer which is informed by a series of conversations with the very real ‘Sonia’.

The longlist was whittled down from over 150 entries by a “panel with expertise in both sports and literature”, which included The Athletic’s Nancy Froston, sports radio presenter Matt Williams, and William Hill’s Neil Foggin.

The shortlist will be unveiled on 26 October, with the winner declared on 30 November at an award ceremony in London.

The William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2023 Longlist (alphabetical by author surname):

• 1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession by Ned Boulting

• Hope and Glory: Rugby League in Thatcher’s Britain by Anthony Broxton

• Inshallah United: A Story of Faith and Football by Nooruddean Choudry

• Unfair Play: The Battle for Women’s Sport by Sharron Davies with Craig Lord

• Good for a Girl: My Life Running in a Man’s World by Lauren Fleshman

• The Silence of the Stands: Finding the Joy in Football’s Lost Season by Daniel Gray

• Answered Prayers: England and the 1966 World Cup by Duncan Hamilton

• Tinseltown: Hollywood and the Beautiful Game – a Match Made in Wrexham by Ian Herbert

• Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson by Sally H. Jacobs

• Nazaré: Life and Death with the Big Wave Surfers by Matt Majendie

• Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

• The Hard Parts: A Story of Courage and Triumph by Oksana Masters

• Unbreakable by Ronnie O’Sullivan

• Concussed: Sport’s Uncomfortable Truth by Sam Peters

• On Days Like These: The Lost Memoir of a Goalkeeper by Tim Rich

• Nowhere to Run: The Ridiculous Life of a Semi-Professional Football Club Chairman by Jonathan Sayer

• Kick The Latch by Kathryn Scanlan

• The Tour: The Story of the England Cricket Team Overseas 1877 – 2023 by Simon Wilde