Dice Sports

Dice Sports by A Leading Edge

£9.99 (paperback)

Dice Sports is a brand new collection of tabletop and travel games reflecting 11 popular sports suitable for introducing new sports and inspiring children from age 7 to adopt a healthy and active lifestyle.

On a summer holiday in France with my family a few years ago, the weather was simply awful. With a housebound young sports-mad child with none of the creature comforts of home, we needed to think a little bit outside the box. He wanted to play football and cricket and hockey and netball, but there was no chance the weather was going to allow us outside to play anything, and the balled piece of paper had run its course.

I remembered my grandfather using a compass to mark holes 1-6 on the sides of a pencil and teaching me how to play ‘Howzat’ cricket by rolling the pencil. Using the number of holes showing face up on edge of the pencil with each number of holes representing runs or a wicket, we were able to play a very basic form of cricket. For hours! This time, on our rainy French summer holiday we had a dice at least, so it didn’t take long to work out how we could play a form of cricket in a similar way.

That night, I got to thinking about how the concept could be applied to other sports. As it happened, some were much better suited than others, but after a while the list of sports and various rules for the dice sports began to grow. Over the holiday, my son got to play most of the sports he was hoping to as well as a few that we were able to introduce him to thanks to the growing list of dice sports we created. The result of our efforts in southern France are all included in Dice Sports.

An active interest in sport has been a huge influence in my life, and as an ex-director of sport, head of cricket and PE & Games teacher in various schools throughout my career as a schoolmaster, the benefits of an active and healthy lifestyle has been one of my main messages to the children in my care. Dice Sports is set up to allow children to find out where they can play sport, a few of the basic rules and act as a great introduction to a variety of team sports for young people. The fact that they help build confidence in basic numeracy as well as keeping children entertained on long journeys or wet summer days is rather a bonus!

The book is now available from www.aleadingedge.co.uk, making this a fantastic stocking filler for any young person who wants to find out about the joys of sport and give them to opportunity to play versions of them whatever the weather outside! In our first public appearance selling the book at Christmas fairs, it was clear that the book has relevance beyond the younger generation, with people buying the book as entertainment and inspiration for elderly people who have enjoyed a life of sport and also people with dementia. It has also become clear that this book is suitable for sports-mad people with disabilities, making this a fantastic gift for anyone who loves sport as well as those who are yet to discover sport.