Balls – a word that always needs exposition. Depending on the conversation, the word can mean bravery; a part of the male anatomy; an event where Cinderella can only stay until midnight; an expletive you can yell in defiance or incredulity or anger; things you can eat; or simply things that every human being anywhere ever has played with at one time or another. Those things you catch or throw or bounce or kick or whack or bat or spin or dodge – balls.

Football fever is setting in, and to take its true temperature, on our Editor’s Pick of the Day, we go straight to balls… footballs. Gussy up – it’s ball season. My name is Rakesh, and you are listening to Moneycontrol.

Before we turn our attention to football, let’s take a minute to understand that most basic of questions – what constitutes a ball? It is not as silly a question as it seems. From a skull to a pig’s bladder to the current engineering marvels they are, balls have indeed rolled a long way. They have not been without their fair share of nomenclature-related confusion, to say nothing of the bad rep. Jerome K Jerome, writer of ‘Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog),’ joked that if celestial beings looked down on earth and saw humans playing ball, they would be convinced that the “ball must be some malignant creature of fiendish power, the great enemy of the human race.” Across the pond, Thomas Jefferson was no big fan of the orb either. “Games played with the ball stamp no character on the mind,” was his declaration on the matter.