CROQUET NEWS:  Dorneywood Croquet Sends Sales Soaring

2 June 2006
London, England, UK
by Amy Iggulden in Daily Telegraph, London, England, UK

John Prescott may be a more likely ambassador for bacon butties and HP sauce than croquet, the sport that speaks of summer lawns and stately homes.

But the Deputy Prime Minister, who was pictured wielding a wooden mallet as he prepared to take charge of the country last week, appears to have been unexpectedly effective in his new role.

As he contemplated life without Dorneywood, the grace-and-favour Buckinghamshire house he has had to give up, Asda announced yesterday that sales of its garden croquet sets had soared by 300 per cent. The country's second biggest supermarket chain, revealed that 6,000 shoppers had bought its £9.87 and £2.96 garden kits, up from 2,000 in the corresponding week last year.

"People have seen Prescott pegging-out and have thought, 'If he can do it, so can we,' " a spokesman said. "The weather this week has been horrid compared with the same week last year, so it is not just people thinking about spending time in the garden."

It is unlikely that the set, which includes four mallets, four coloured balls, two wooden stakes and 10 hoops, featured in Pauline Prescott's trolley as she left Asda on Wednesday, laden with shopping.

But calls to the Croquet Association's inquiries line increased by half after the Dorneywood match and Harrods also reported an increase in sales of sets.

Bernard Neal, the president of the association, the governing body of croquet in Britain, said he was grateful to Mr Prescott for the unexpected publicity.

"We are delighted if this encourages people to take up the game - it is a cracking sport," said Prof Neal, a former open champion and current vice-president of the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.

"I was rather relieved to see that his kit looked quite good. There seemed to be sturdy hoops with good clearance for the ball. But the grass was at least an inch long and as to the rules he was playing to, Lord only knows."

Mr Prescott claimed not to be familiar with the game, saying that it was all his employees' idea. He told a newspaper yesterday: "I don't know the rules. Isn't it to put through the hoop and beat the other bugger?"

Croquet experts believe that he was almost certainly playing golf croquet, the simpler, younger relative of association croquet. Both versions are regularly played by 4,000 people in Britain, 1,600 of them competitively.

The association says that interest in croquet has been growing steadily.

Prof Neal said: "It is a phenomenon of the past few years. Croquet used to mean cucumber sandwiches on vicarage lawns but now thousands of people from all walks of life play every weekend."

But if the association was happy to embrace Mr Prescott as its mascot, it was less pleased that so many people were buying cheap croquet sets.

Proper croquet sets started at around £100 and went up to £600 for "something decent", Prof Neal said. "Cheap ones are all right for mucking about on the lawn."