SPORTS AND THE BRITISH
SPORTS AND THE BRITISH

Summary/Abstract: The intellectual process of writing about this topic most certainly is not facile at all. The main difficulty lies in the fact that operating a selection of representative sports is without any doubt quite a business. Then there is the task of choosing what information goes into the description of every sport. This last challenge is also the problem encountered when any attempt to summarise the article is about to be made. But summarising the article in an abstract is a must. It has to be written for the sake of easing the understanding. What’s more while any book, even a book of relatively small size has a table of contents for obvious practical reasons, this is not feasible in the case of any articles, even if the wording this article spans over a great length. So, taking a good look at the article one has decided to write a selection of ideas about each sport in particular. There’s the association football which tops the list of British preferences. It isn’t just a British development, but also the most successful British export surpassing by far even the other great British export, the English Language. It’s played literally everywhere around the globe, and many people learn how to play this game even before they learn to spell their names. It’s a socially binding experience which transcends all social strata and it has popularised sportswear. Then there is cricket, a game which has made the transition from the lower classes to the upper classes. It has created protective gear long before the extreme sports practiced today. It has once been spread by the British throughout their Empire and now unites people of various cultures in the former colonies. A third sport in this enumeration is Field Hockey. Different forms of it have been played since ancient times and artefacts have been found which prove it. It has also been spread around in the former British Empire with various degrees of acceptance. Field Hockey is a sport played by film stars in their youth. It was watched with appreciable interest during the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. This game has brought joy to millions is played world-wide, coming right after association football. Next in line is rugby. While many a people use the word rugby caution is advised for one needs to pay attention to the fact that there are two kinds of rugby played by different sets of rules, namely Rugby League and Rugby Union. Their rivalry has been surprisingly fruitful and has given birth two types of championships which have spread in parallel beyond the confines of the English-speaking world. When it comes to Tennis one word is usually enough to encapsulate the whole ethos of the game. This name is Wimbledon. It is a tournament of the superlatives which the public attend in order to watch the exchange of balls which has been refined to perfection.

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