Eleven-year-old David Wiseman is mad about cricket but no good at it. He has the entire kit but none of the skill, and he's a laughingstock at school. So when a Jamaican family moves in next door and builds a cricket net in the back garden, David is in seventh heaven. But this is 1960s Britain, and when the neighbours start to make life difficult for the new arrivals, David's family is caught in the middle, and he has to choose between fitting in and standing up for the new friends who have turned his world upside-down.
Written by
Anonymous
Young Jewish lad David's passion is cricket. Unfortunately he's pretty hopeless at it, so he is delighted that the new next-door neighbours are also cricket lovers--they even put a net up in the garden--and are prepared to coach him, but this is 1960s London and they are Jamaican, so David's parents find themselves under pressure to put an end to their son's friendship. As they themselves are immigrants from wartime Germany who have suffered bigotry in Britain, they have difficult choices to make.
Written by
Jeremy Perkins {jwp@aber.ac.uk}
Of Jewish decent, Ruth Wiseman married a much older man, and the couple is now living in 1960s Britain along with a son and a daughter. Their Caucasian neighbors tend to look down upon them, and they receive threatening hand-written notes. Their son David loves cricket, is not able to play, and, hence, is put in charge of the scoreboard at his school. When the Samuels move in next door from Jamaica and set up a net so they can bowl cricket balls in their backyard, David meets them, and through Dennis and Loretta, he learns how to bat and bowl. He then requests to be included in his school's team, and after being put through a preliminary test, succeeds--albeit as a tail-ender. In the very first match, David proves his worth and is promoted to middle-order batsman. He subsequently fares even better and instantly becomes popular. His popularity increases his awareness and he decides to forsake his friendship with his mentors, while some neighbors decide to take matters in their own hands to show the supposedly undesirables of their neighborhood that they are not wanted, in particular, and in Britain in general.
Written by
rAjOo (gunwanti@hotmail.com)
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