What Ball Game were they playing on the street?

What Ball Game were they playing on the street? Why wasn't it soccer? That was supposed to be East London. They should be playing soccer. Were they playing soccer in the book version? Is there an un-written rule in movie-dom that goes "don't ever show soccer in a movie if the target audience is America"? This alway takes European movies down a notch for me when soccer is conspicuous in it's absense. Like the 1994 movie "Barcelona" for example. How are you going to have whole movie set in Barca and no futbol? Dishonest. To be constistant I think "Charlie Bubbles" from 1968 and "Lover of The Arctic Circle" to be both honest and movies that this American liked because of the weaving of soccer into the respective plots. Long story short- when I see a movie set in modern europe and no sign of futbol my "B.S." alert goes off and then even a good movie starts losing me.