Sports Explained

You are the only person in the room who does not know what just happened.

Everyone else is leaning forward. Something has clearly gone wrong, or gone right, and it has gone that way suddenly. An official has made a gesture. Half the room has groaned. You are nodding along with an expression you hope reads as informed disappointment, and what you are actually thinking is that you have no idea what any of that meant.

Sports Explained is written for exactly that moment.

This is a complete beginner's guide to how 40 sports are played, covering the rules, the scoring, the equipment and the words commentators use. It will not turn you into an expert. It will do something faster and far more useful: it will teach you to read a sport you have never seen before.

Every chapter is built the same way

Read one and you know how to read all forty. Each opens with a box of facts: players per side, size of the playing area, how long it lasts, how you score, and which body writes the rules. Then the object of the game in a single paragraph. The playing area and equipment, with an original diagram drawn to the governing body's published dimensions. How play actually works, from the first whistle to the last. How scoring works. What each role is responsible for. The handful of rules that decide most contests. A glossary of the terms you will hear. And finally, what to watch for the first time you sit down with a match in front of you.

The 40 sports covered in full

• Team sports: soccer, basketball, American football, baseball, cricket, rugby union, Australian rules football, ice hockey, field hockey, volleyball, team handball, netball.
• Racket and court sports: tennis, table tennis, badminton, squash, pickleball.
• Combat sports: boxing, wrestling, judo, taekwondo, fencing, mixed martial arts.
• Athletics and endurance: track running, jumps and throws, the marathon, artistic gymnastics, swimming, cycling, triathlon.
• Target and precision sports: golf, archery, ten-pin bowling, darts, snooker.
• Water and winter sports: rowing, surfing, alpine skiing, figure skating, curling.

A further 25 sports get a page each, among them rugby league, Gaelic football, hurling, water polo, lacrosse, kabaddi, sumo, sport climbing, biathlon and motorsport. Sixty-five sports in all.

Why this book works when others do not

Most references tell you what a rule says. This one tells you why it exists. Almost every rule in every sport is scar tissue. Somebody found a clever way to win, everybody agreed it was ruining the game, and the rule followed. Offside is not a fussy technicality invented to frustrate you. It is the only thing standing between soccer and a long-range punting contest. Once you can ask what a rule prevents, rules stop feeling arbitrary.

Every chapter also ends by telling you where to point your eyes. Stop watching the ball in soccer and watch the space ahead of it. Watch the screens in basketball. Read the down and distance in American football. Watch the T in squash. Find out who holds the hammer in curling. Almost nobody tells beginners this, and it is the difference between confusion and genuinely following a game.

Who it is for

Anyone who has sat through a match they could not follow. Partners marrying into sport-obsessed families. People who have moved countries and inherited a national game. Parents watching a child play something they never played themselves. New fans, returning fans, and anyone who would rather understand the sport on the screen than simply sit through it.

No prior knowledge is assumed and no chapter depends on any other. Open it anywhere.