Handled Ball: But it's not cricket

When I was fourteen and on a school exchange visit to Germany, I encountered a sport I hadn't seen before. Come to think of it, I had probably never heard of the sport before. Once I saw it, and once I started to play it, I wondered why it was such a mystery sport.

Handball was basketball without the fannying around and the posing. It was basketball without the stupid hoop basket. It had a goal, an altogether more inviting target. It was bedlam, fast, furious and now and then quite skilful.

It was also easy to understand. At the same time as I was baffling any German who was vaguely interested in knowing about cricket by introducing notions of bowling a maiden over, fielding at silly mid off or being given out leg before wicket (and even now if I venture the subject of cricket with a German, he or she confuses it with croquet), understanding handball was absurdly simple. Get ball, run, pass, shoot at goal. Football, but with the hand and not the foot.

It is reckoned that handball started as a sport as a means of keeping German footballers fit in the summer. Originally, it was entirely an outdoor sport, played on a football pitch and with the same size goals. There is an alternative version of handball history, one that places its origins back in the sixth century BC. Whichever version one prefers, the first official match is usually taken to have been played in 1917 and the first international in 1925, Germany beating Austria.

It was the Danes who turned handball into the indoor sport it now almost exclusively is. Some 30 years on from it having been taken indoors, handball became an Olympic sport, appropriately enough, given its modern roots with German football, at the 1972 Munich Games. What I had seen and played two years before at a school near Stuttgart could now be seen by the world. Not that I recall seeing any handball at the 1972 Games. Great Britain, of course, didn't play it. Or rather, there was a Great Britain team but it was hopeless. Among the crushing defeats it endured in the pre-Games qualifying group was a 37-12 loss to Luxembourg and a 40-5 thrashing at the hands (literally) of Spain.

The development of handball as an international sport has, to a degree, been determined by international political developments. From a sport played by Germanic countries, it became popular in the Soviet bloc, to the extent that eastern European countries dominated. The break-up of the bloc led to a further broadening as players and coaches from Hungary, East Germany and elsewhere moved, and Spain, for the first time, started to feature as a leading handball nation. Handball is now Spain's third most popular sport in terms of registered participants, placing it behind football and basketball. Spain's men's team has won three Olympic bronzes in the past five Games, and the women's team won its first bronze in London.

The men's world championship is currently being held in Spain; the country has not hosted the tournament before. In a preliminary group with Algeria, Egypt, Australia, Hungary and Croatia, the big games are against the latter two. Progress for Spain should be assured, as the top four teams qualify for the next stage. The final will be held in Barcelona on 27 January.

And Barcelona, as with football, dominates Spanish handball. FC Barcelona Intersport has won the national league more often than any other side (on eleven occasions) and has won the European cup eight times. Seven of the squad of sixteen for the world championship play for Barcelona, the next highest club representation coming not from a Spanish side but from France's Nantes (three of the squad). There is no Mallorcan in the squad, but, oddly enough, there is one member who was born in Wales. Altor Ariño, a defender, comes originally from Penarth.

Spain finished third at the last world championships in 2011. As hosts, the team will hope to go two steps better this time. Not that this will be easy for a team which was beaten in the London Olympics quarter-finals by the current world champions, France. However, such an Olympic disappointment has a precedent in being followed by triumph. In 2005, Spain became world champions having crashed out the year before in Athens. If all goes to plan, on 27 January, around about half six in the evening, if you hear shouts of joy from a bar, they will be shouts not because of football but because of handball. Spain will be champions. Or maybe not.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.