Balls to Fly: An Autobiography

The autobiography of Ricardo Ellcock tells the story of a Barbadian schoolboy who left his family behind to move overseas and follow his sporting dreams. With a burgeoning reputation as one of the fastest bowlers in the land, Ellcock’s hopes of playing Test cricket for England were cruelly thwarted by injury. Plunged into depression and forced to pursue another career, a childhood interest in aviation was to be his salvation. Ellcock relocated to the USA and qualified as a commercial airline pilot, becoming the first black captain with Virgin Atlantic.

Ellcock’s autobiography is unsparing and hard-hitting, revealing as it does a lifetime spent overcoming biases, prejudices and racism, not to mention being saved from death by receiving four life-saving brain operations in the space of eight weeks. Balls to Fly charts one man’s extraordinary story of determination, endeavour and resilience.

The book is a fascinating journey through the ups and downs of Ellcock’s singular story, describing how he used to be driven to school by the Prime Minister of Barbados; earned a scholarship at one the UK’s most prestigious public schools at just 15 years of age; turned up to make his first-class cricket debut whilst wearing school uniform; had cruel luck with injury sabotaging his hopes of playing Test cricket for England; retrained as an airline pilot and became Virgin Atlantic’ s first black captain; he was saved from death by four brain operations within eight weeks.