It’s game on in uncovering the many sports-inspired terms, expressions, sayings and images that populate our everyday language! That’s the challenge that this book takes on, using a playbook for each sport. It kicks off with an opening run through the game of football, then it’s out of the gate with wire-to-wire coverage of horse racing. After going for the fences and covering all the bases in the sport of baseball, the ball is kept rolling, despite many a sticky wicket, through the long-running game of cricket. A blow-by-blow account of the sweet science of boxing is followed by play-by-play accounts of 35 more sports that have been added to the roster. At the finish line, the top three sports, are scored on their relative contributions to everyday language, and declared win, place and show. The discussion is enlivened by lots of sports humour and anecdotes along with quotations from sports personalities some of which may sound quite familiar, much like déjà vu all over again.

We often decry "amateurism", yet one can do things "for the love of it" rather than for money. It can also show that an economic system which has more voluntary, unpaid activity is a more efficient system. This work examines amateurism's rationale, its history, ethics and economics.

In this allegorical excursion, William Walcott explores the intersections between United States politics and the game of cricket in a book reminiscent of C. L. R. James's classic Beyond a Boundary. In Close of Play, Walcott highlights the careers of former US president Barack Obama and the Trinidadian cricket and cultural phenom Brian Lara-one of the greatest batsmen of all time, who Obama once called "e;the Michael Jordan of cricket."e; Readers are invited to explore the parallel poetics of politics and sport through the life and words of these luminaries, both of whom promised to deliver far-reaching social change yet found themselves "e;on the back foot."e; In his analysis, Walcott delves into matters of Caribbean and American identity, political leadership, oratory, and the blending of cricket vocabulary into political commentary. He also challenges us to understand the sociological links between international sport, socio-economic inequality, and racial politics. This book is a fascinating journey into the world of global sociopolitical life and the curiosities of language embedded in cricket and political play, both of which constitute enormous sectors within a multibillion dollar "e;sticky wicket"e; of transnational capitalism.

A geographical history of cricket in England and Wales in a global context.