Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please? by Julian Norridge
Julian Norridge asks Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please?
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Thursday, 02, Jul 2009 10:22
Published by Penguin, out now, paperback, 407 pp, £9.99.
In a nutshell...
Light-hearted, exhaustive and intelligent.
What's it all about?
The author is a proud enough Brit to understand that while the nation may not be the best at certain sports - if not most of them - they still managed to bring a thin yet necessary veil of bureaucracy into a once hotch-potch, village-to-village existence within sport.
This documents the sports which are central to the UK as well as the world as a whole, going into them from start to finish, developing key events and looking into exactly why and how this was achieved.
This was enough to secure it with the credibility of being the Sunday Times Sports Book of the Year 2008.
Who's it by?
Julian Norridge is London-based and has a background in writing and has received accreditation by the BAFTAs, Emmys as well as others for his proud journalism, though this happens to be the man's first book.
As an example...
"In the beginning, there were games. There always have been. As soon as our ancestors found they could spare a bit of time from hunting and gathering, they started playing around with whatever came to hand - sticks, stones, spears, each other - and competing."
Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster
It's unlikely there'll be an epic about multiple sports any time soon, though this one's firmly for the book world anyway.
What the others say
"A great and funny read, both to dip into or to consume in one go." - Independent
"As [Norridge] shows, we are a playful nation - which is, perhaps, why sport's commodification weighs so heavily on the British heart." - Guardian
So is it any good?
What we essentially have here is a series of essays about the sports which shaped the modern world of competition, covering them from their feudal foundations to the modern day.
It's well executed, to say the least. Everything makes sense and, while Norridge is happy to chip in with certain points of view as opposed to hard fact, everything has a reason to be there: to entertain, much like the sports he describes. He does this remarkably well.
And the list of sports is not limited in the slightest. Boxing, horse racing, football, cricket, golf, rugby, American football, tennis, baseball, athletics and even swimming and pub games all get hefty coverage, as well as everything in between or derived from them.
Norridge's main strength is in how he relates to the audience. From the first moment, he writes with authority yet doesn't talk down to the reader. He's well-read and straightforward, backing up points casually to reinforce the learning experience.
What's more, he is able to balance the British self-deprecating cynicism with a genuine level of light-heartedness. This makes anything surprising or shocking from the history of sport become perfectly contextualised in both the time of the event as well as the present day, where rules and social views have evolved away from old attitudes.
And yet the facts come thick and fast. While there isn't much time to stop and consider the scene without putting the book down, and even though the bulk of the facts will be disposed of in no time, you'll come away refreshed, educated and - strangely - excited by much of it.
A large part of the book's charm is in its ease of reading. While it's nowhere near as immediately accessible as one of the many miscellanies available on the market every year, it would take pride of place on any bedside table, in any backpack or - given its male orientation through the topics alone - one of many toilets.
For those wanting an even more in-and-out experience, there's even a range of maps, inset boxes with related (yet separate) information, as well as plenty of pretty pictures to gawp at every now and then.
Most people who don't like sports will probably look elsewhere for their paperback kicks, yet they'd be missing out hugely. The book not only goes into detail about the sports themselves but the people who created them, why they thought in the way they did and how the face of British culture changed as a whole.
It's more about history than sport. It's a commentary on the quintessential Britishness of, well, the British. Okay, it's not the first to take this approach and it certainly won't be the last. Luckily, it's one of the best.
9/10
Matt Gardner