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Click Here to Watch the Video Ben Brewer, the creator of the new ball game, Catchback, is fairly candid about how the game came about: "It was a clear dry day, so my sons and I were out in the garden where we played cricket, then hockey and finally some tennis. After an hour or so they said, "What can we do now?" So I took a sheet of plywood and wedged it against a tree using a six-inch nail to form a curved surface, against which I threw a tennis ball for one or other of them to catch.
"At this early stage," Ben continued, "most of the throws simply hit the plywood and bounced straight back, but occasionally--and to everyone"s delight--a ball would hit the base of the board at just the right angle and speed, travel onto the back of the curve, and shoot back out at almost the same velocity it went in. After a short time we became pretty good at judging what was the right angle and speed. It was addictive; we were out there until it got too dark to see. You just could not believe how much fun we were having. This was the starting point for Catchback." Using this as a starting point, Ben used an inverted garden Bench as a temporary jig to hold a 3mm thick plastic board at various angles, while wedging wood under the front of the board to give a greater or lesser angle of attack and backward lift.   (click images to view full size) After a considerable amount of trial-and-error, Ben perfected the ideal curve. A prototype was built and some details further refined, before the game-board was ready for mass production. But that is only part of the story. Ben then devised a scoring system not unlike that for squash, and from that developed a game for one, two or four players, of either gender, any age and across the whole spectrum of sporting abilities using a hard-rubberized, soft-surface ball, but of course any firm dense ball (for example, from the games of cricket, baseball, or rounders) can be used. The method of play is simple: any ball thrown must hit the Catchback board in front of the start of the upward curve. The ball will then return at various angles to be caught.
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