Baily's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, Volume 85 / January to June, 1906

by Various

(2) The monotony of long breaks will be abolished.

(3) The shorter the game the larger the proportion of start to finish—the two most interesting periods of the game.

One of the worst features of the game of croquet as practised at tournaments of late years has been the practice of close wiring, by leaving the next player stuck in the middle of a hoop or up against the wire. A usual finish up to a break was to leave the next player tight in the blue hoop after the player had himself run it, and many a first-rate player has been beaten by 26 points without ever getting an open shot throughout the game. Last season some of the leading players, notably Mr. Arthur Gilbey, at Swakeleys, adopted a system which should defeat the methods of the close wirer, and this system has now been incorporated in the laws of the game. The new law reads as follows:—

“If at the commencement of a turn the striker’s ball is “wired” from all the other balls, either through the interposition or interference of any hoop or peg, such ball being distant less than one yard from that hoop or peg and having been placed there by the stroke of an adversary, the striker may at his option lift his ball and play it from any spot within a yard of where it lies. A ball is “wired” when (1) any part of it cannot be driven in a straight line towards every part of the ball aimed at; or (2) a wire or peg so interferes with the backward swing of the mallet that the striker cannot freely aim at every part of the ball.”

The Croquet Association Gazette points out four drawbacks to this law, viz., two measurements, lifting the ball, and the problem of deciding whether a ball be wired or not.

Also the definition of wiring demands careful attention. The whole target presented by the ball must be open; if the left-hand edge of the striker’s ball cannot be driven in a straight line so as to hit the right-hand edge of the object ball then the balls are wired. So this law gives the open shot to everyone who is not wired by his own mallet or that of his partner, should his ball be placed within three feet of a hoop or peg by an adversary. There still remains the chance of safely “masking” the balls from the shot of an opponent who is left in the open, and the leading players were quite equal to doing this last season. But “masking” the balls requires considerable ability, whilst any fool could jam an adversary’s ball in a hoop.

The law with regard to “taking off” without moving both balls has now been remodelled, and now that part of Law 17 reads: “In so doing (i.e., taking off) he must move or shake each ball perceptibly, should he fail to do so the balls are to remain where they lie or be replaced at the option of the striker, and the turn ceases. The striker, if challenged, must be prepared to assert definitely that he saw both balls move or shake, and in default of such assertion the balls shall not be considered to have been perceptibly moved or shaken. If the two balls do not touch before and in the act of taking croquet the adversary may require the stroke to be played again. In taking croquet the striker’s ball shall not be in contact with more than one ball.”

The result of this law is that this offence is no longer regarded as a foul stroke, but is treated much the same as the offence of driving one of the balls over the boundary in a croquet stroke; except that in the case of not moving the balls the offender can elect whether he will replace the balls as they were before the stroke was made, or whether he will leave them where they are at the end of the stroke.

It is quite right to make the penalty for non-moving or shaking less severe than formerly, for since it must generally be a matter of rather close observation to determine whether a ball has moved or no, and since the striker is obviously in the best position to observe this, it was difficult enough for some strikers to confess that they had not moved the ball, and it is to be hoped that the lightening of the punishment may lead to more pleas of guilty.

Of a verity there seems to be no end to the laws of croquet, and it requires quite a gifted head to carry them all, with their various alterations and additions; and the edition of the “Laws of Croquet” for 1906 is likely to revive the industry of the painstaking man who learns up the laws by heart as well as he can, and always carries a copy of the book in his pocket with a view to winning an occasional bet over some well-engineered discussion about the laws of croquet.