Croquet
Croquet is an enjoyable, sociable, strategic game that can be played by people of any age and gender. It relies on touch, accuracy and tactics rather than speed and strength, so it’s playable by anyone on equal terms.
Watch this introductory film by the Croquet Association to find out more.
The Game
There are several different forms of croquet, but the two main ones played in the UK are Association Croquet and Golf Croquet.
The two games use the same equipment, and many people enjoy playing each. Both games reward strategic planning, and include a handicap system. This allows a smart player the chance to outfox an opponent, no matter what their level of physical expertise.
Golf Croquet
Golf Croquet is a game of accurate ball placement and straight hitting, so has much in common with golf.
It is played with four balls, Blue and Black versus Red and Yellow. Each turn consists of just one shot, and play is strictly in sequence: Blue, then Red, then Black, Yellow and Blue again.
All four balls attempt to get through Hoop 1. As soon as one ball is successful, that side scores a point, and attention passes to the next hoop in the sequence. The first side to seven points is the winner.
Hitting the opponent out of position is legal. Players will often clear an opponent’s ball 30 yards, in the hope of keeping it out of range. Tactical complexity arises out of blocking shots, and putting the other players out of position, while putting your partner into a better scoring opportunity.
There’s more detail available in the Basic Rules of Golf Croquet here, or visit the Croquet Association website for the full World Croquet Federation Rules of Golf Croquet.
Association Croquet
“Association” Croquet allows bonus shots, and is similar to snooker or pool. It is played with four balls, Blue and Black versus Red and Yellow.
Each side has to guide their balls through a circuit of hoops. The winner is the side which scores all 12 hoops for each ball, and hits them against the centre peg. Unlike Gold Croquet, if a ball scores its hoop, it earns another shot, and if it hits one of the other three balls it earns another two shots.
The first of those two extra shots is called a “croquet”. For this, you pick up your ball, place it touching the other ball, and hit it, so that both balls move. Play this right, and you can send your ball close enough to earn more bonus shots, and the other ball somewhere useful. Skillful players can string together a series of bonus shots, and score several hoops in one turn.
The handicap system is based on extra turns, called “bisques”. Weaker players receive a number of these bisques, and can use them to score hoops or croquet the other balls.
A more detailed description of the rules in plain English is here. For the official Laws of Association Croquet, visit the Croquet Association website. For coaching advice, visit Oxford Croquet which focuses on the skills and tactics of Association Croquet from beginner level to advanced play.
History of Croquet
Origin
A quintessentially English game?
The Chambers dictionary lists croquet as a northern French dialect form of crochet, meaning a little crook. It is generally agreed that the game croquet emerged from Ireland around 1850 where it was known as crookey, a word with its root meaning as a hooked stick. A northern European origin for the game is possibly evidenced in the 17th Century. The Dutch game of beugelen (played on an indoor clay court with football-sized wooden balls and one metal ring) and in the French game of pall mall (jeu de mail), played with smaller balls, hoops and mallets (mail, maillet) on a strip of land, as attested by Samuel Pepys in London in 1661.
The game of croquet was introduced to Victorian England by John Jaques and marketed to the growing middle class via the manufacture of croquet sets, which were showcased at The Great Exhibition of 1851. Great Exhibition sets were reissued in the 21st century by Jaques of London to mark 150 years since the introduction of croquet to England.
Association
For Club and Country
The popularity of the game in Victorian times engendered a wave of publications, including John Jaques’ Laws and Regulations, Walter James Whitmore’s guide to tactics in The Field magazine of 1886 and Mayne Reid’s Croquet. Each publication offered a different number of rules, ranging from 20 to 126! Consensus arrived in 1870 with the publication of The Conference Rules of Laws. The current Laws of Association Croquet number a modest 55, though that number climbs into the hundreds if you count the many sub-sections.
As croquet grew in popularity, clubs were formed. In 1860, the first club was established at Worthing in west Sussex, followed by the All England Croquet Club at Wimbledon in 1868, and the first official croquet competition was played in 1870.
A need to coordinate the activities of a growing number of clubs led to the formation of The Croquet Association (CA) in 1897; it remains today the national governing body for the sport in England (now called Croquet England, as of 2023) and produces the laws of croquet for both Association and Golf.
The introduction of lawn tennis in 1875 challenged the popularity of croquet, but croquet continued to be played and perhaps benefited from the higher standards of lawn care that tennis demanded. Lawn mowers, first invented in 1830, improved and evolved to suit the leisure market.
Croquet was an Olympic sport once. It featured at the summer Olympics in Paris in 1900, with just ten competitors, all French except for one Belgian. It was held over three weeks but attracted no spectators beyond one elderly Englishman! It was, however, the first Olympic sport to include women: Madame Brohy and Mademoiselle Ohnier.
Development
A Golden Age
As the world went to war in 1914, Stanley Paul & Co. published Lord Tollemache’s Croquet. The text describes the game of the Edwardian golden age, supported by photographs demonstrating the techniques of a sequence game (as golf croquet today), involving ‘tight croqueting’ where the striker put his foot on his ball and hit it to move the ball in contact over the lawn, sending it ‘up the country’. Croquet illustrates hoops run from circles rounding them on a square court with 4 baulks, 6 hoops and 2 pegs (1st below fifth hoop, 2nd above sixth hoop). The player was required to hit the 2nd peg (turning peg) with the striker’s ball, thus gaining one stroke before advancing to 1-back. The end game involved a peg-out at the peg below the fifth hoop.
Today
The World Croquet Federation was founded in 1989 and now has more than 29 country members. Today, national, international and world championships continue to maintain the profile of the sport, while regional federations coordinate its development, including running croquet leagues.
In the UK, there are over 10,000 registered members who take part across over 200 clubs.
This page is derived from one on the Beverley and East Riding Croquet Club by Debbie James.
Cover image: from Mr Punch’s Pocket Book for 1862, drawing by John Leech