Balls To Fly
Martin Chandler |Published: 2023
Pages: 207
Author: Ellcock, Ricky
Publisher: Fairfield Books
Rating: 4 stars
I didn’t realise until I opened this one just how little I remembered of Ricky Ellcock. I did recall that he was a Bajan born fast bowler who was a surprise selection for England’s touring party to his native Caribbean in 1989/90, and that what proved to be a career ending injury ended his trip just as it had begun.
What I don’t recall is ever witnessing him bowl, although I must have seen him as I watched the 1989 Nat West Trophy final when his Middlesex side were defeated in the last over by Warwickshire. Neil Smith hitting the second delivery of that over for the first six of the match I do remember, but of Ellcock’s ten overs I have no memory.
But England’s selectors have never been great champions of the inexperienced, so Ellcock must have been a decent prospect, and the saddest end to any promising sporting career is one caused by injury, so the idea of a book from Ellock certainly sounded like an interesting one.
In fact Ellcock’s story goes well beyond interesting, and is certainly unique. That Ellcock was born and raised in Barbados I did know, but had never realised that he was the only member of his family to spend time in England. For Ellcock that came about as a result of his cricketing talent being spotted by the prestigious English school at Malvern, and a scholarship was found for him.
Most sporting autobiographies spend a couple of chapters going through their subject’s background and education, which is where Balls to Fly is very different. The book is more than half read when Ellcock makes his debut for Worcestershire, and he was still a schoolboy then.
One important question was always going to be what it was like to be the only black pupil at a school like Malvern. How much racism did Ellcock suffer? He deals with that in a way that I certainly did’t expect. Most of Ellcock’s narrative, whilst hinting at darker aspects in the background, concentrates on the positive input and warm welcome he received from many. Then, just as you feel you have git to the end of the story there is an appendix, its title Bias, Prejudice and Racism, and the negative aspects are collected there.
And then there are the injuries and time spent in surgery and with his back in plaster. Ellcock could be forgiven that losing his first career in such stressful, dangerous and painful circumstances might have been enough, but he was wrong.
Quite apart from the sheer fact of coming to the UK in the circumstances in which he did, and the efforts that he then went to to salvage his cricket career, the thing that impressed me most about Ellcock was the fact that he then succeeded in becoming a commercial pilot. I suppose if you think about it, which I never have, it is blindingly obvious that there has to be a formidable amount of expensive and demanding training undergone and completed, and kudos to Ellcock for getting himself through that.
Life’s curveballs had not finished flying in Captain Ellcock’s direction however. At the end of 2018 he found himself hospitalised and undergoing life saving surgery for a brain injury that dated back to a fall a few years previously. It is harrowing story in the telling of which Ellcock communicates all too well to his reader the fears he must have had as he navigated his way through that episode.
Even that was not the end of Ellcock’s travails. As he made his recovery from his various surgeries he decided, as the pandemic spread, that his vulnerabilities were such that he would do better in England than in Barbados, he returned. Shortly after that he received the news that his mother, like so many mothers a beacon of support and a tower of strength to him, had passed away. Could things get any worse for Ellcock?
It seems that the answer to that one is, at long last, no they could not, as the single paragraph that takes his story up to date certainly suggests not. And therein lies the books one slight frustration. Ellcock’s reader sincerely hopes that his health, career and life generally are back on track, but all we can do is take those five sentences as confirmation that they are.
Balls to Fly is a remarkable story, and highly recommended.
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