CROQUET NEWS: Prescott Factor has Croquet Sets Jumping Through Hoops

THIS SPORTING LAND. Our correspondent embarks on a journey through the rich and varied landscape of British sport in search of the traditional, neglected and downright bizarre.

11 July 2006
Cheltenham, England, UK
by Alan Lee in The Times, London, England, UK

TAP the word “croquet” into a search engine and the chances are it will generate stories about the extracurricular pursuits of the Deputy Prime Minister. This might be expected to infuriate traditional supporters of the game, yet instead they react with approval. Makes a change, they say, from the clichéd stereotyping that is generally their lot.

Croquet is an evolution lost in an anachronism. Standards are higher than ever, participant levels are rising, laws are regularly revised and there is a more confrontational form that could even have television potential. Still, the popular perception is of a game played badly by semi-inebriated toffs on their country-house lawns.

On Sunday, the final of the Mitsubishi British Open was contested by two men widely thought to be the best the game has known. It started soon after breakfast and came to the closest conclusion possible some time after that alternative lawn sport had presented its trophies in SW19.

As at Wimbledon, there were physical contrasts, tactical subtleties and pivotal moments. And yet while Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal played to a packed house and a television audience of millions, Rob Fulford won his 6½-hour marathon with Reg Bamford watched by two dozen people on the terrace of Cheltenham’s old timber clubhouse.

There was an innovation, a webcam recording proceedings for the sport’s official site, but this drew ribaldry from those present, most of whom doubted if there was anyone watching it. Jack Wicks, at 22 the youngest player in the championships, offered to do a streak to see if this might produce a reaction, but he was wisely dissuaded.

All this helps to explain why the impact of John Prescott swinging a croquet mallet has not produced a mass headache on the lawns of Hurlingham and Budleigh Salterton. The effect is quantified by Klim Seabright, secretary of the Croquet Association. “Our website normally gets 4,000 hits a month,” he said. “We got 16,000 in a week when the Prescott pictures came out.”

It also boosted a specific enterprise aimed at attracting garden croquet players into club competition. “We called it the National Croquet Challenge and based qualifiers all round the country,” Seabright said. “In the 24 hours following those pictures, entries doubled.”

Seabright estimates that 4,000 people play the game at club level in Britain. The top 43 were in Cheltenham for nine days and no one was surprised by the eventual finalists. Bamford and Fulford had won the event six times each and had 17 previous head-to-heads at this level.

Fulford, who bears a striking resemblance to Colin Cowdrey in his Test cricket days, has also been world champion five times, but he said that he is scarcely recognised even in his home town of Colchester. Bamford, who resembles a South Africa fast bowler and actually was one once, is the reigning world champion and probably came closest to a public profile as the mystery guest on They Think It’s All Over, the BBC television sports quiz programme.

“I think back to those Scottish women curlers, who got instant recognition because theirs was an Olympic sport,” Fulford, 36, said. “Croquet will never be that, though it could be included in the Commonwealth Games, and it does sometimes seem unfair.”

Bamford, a year older than his rival, said: “The image is unfortunate and it will always struggle to overcome that. I started playing in Cape Town when I was 7 and I got ribbed a lot when I was a youngster, but I was always big enough to look after myself.”

The complexities of technique and tactics are deterrents to growth. Half of those who take up croquet stop within three months, unable to cope with the demands of grips and laws, topography and geo- metry.

Bamford, however, has diversified and also plays the simpler Golf Croquet, in which the Egyptians are dominant. “I’m going to Cairo for the World Championships in October,” he said. “The games are played under floodlights, with a big crowd baying, and it’s like a bullring. It could catch on.”

All that seemed a world away from events in Cheltenham. There are undeniably twee elements to this sport, in which the players wear 1970s tennis gear, terms such as “tea-lady shot” and “Irish peel” abound, a bell is rung for mealtimes and prize givings are conducted like a school speech day.

No one, though, should underestimate the skill involved. Bamford and Fulford are highly talented sportsmen, so mentally focused that neither ate more than a banana all day. Sportsmanship is also notably high in a game as self-regulating as golf. “Tempers are lost very rarely,” Fulford said. “There’s no croquet equivalent of a dive.”

Of course, a Zidane-style butt in the final might have propelled croquet back on to the front pages, but that is a step too far, even for a sport happy to embrace the Prescott fallout. “Maybe someone like Robbie Williams will take it up next,” Seabright said. “Then it might be seen as cool.”

CELTIC ROOTS

The game? Croquet arrived in Britain from Ireland in 1850 and the first recorded game was in Evesham, Worcestershire

Who plays? About 4,000 men and women in 134 member clubs, plus many in their gardens

Who watches? There’s the rub. Almost no one bar the players

Big event? British Open staged at Hurlingham or Cheltenham every July

Weblink? www.croquet.org.uk