The seven days marking the turn of the month perhaps typified for me the life of the croquet player and how much depends on our all too unpredictable mental attitude.
On July 28th I was looking forward to playing at Bristol for the first time, envisaging lovely lawns maintained by a well-resourced city club. So it was a bit of a shock arriving to find the two completely brown, patchy and generally very rough-looking lawns we were expected to play on.
Sure enough, it was a day of playing something more akin to “Crazy Croquet” rather than Short Croquet. It seems I adapted the worst in our team, as I lost all four of my games — which was the main reason why we lost the match.
However, our hosts were delightful and did their best to make up for the dreadful state of their lawns with a cream tea and home-made cake.
The next day I was down at Hamptworth for another SC match. Would their lawns be any better? At first sight, the signs were hopeful; there were actually patches of green on the lawn! However, further inspection and the subsequent match showed that playing on a random patchwork of almost bald lawn and roughly-mown green grass was even more unpredictable than the day before.
Nevertheless, it seems I managed to improve my Crazy Croquet skills, winning a respectable two out of four. Blewbury managed to do just enough to draw the match, mainly thanks to Joe King winning all four of his games.
On the Friday I returned with relief to the lovely green, level lawns of Blewbury to play the redoubtable Raghu Iyer of Phyllis Court for an AC C level play match alongside Paul Wolff. Relief soon turned to frustration as, having begun to get the hang of Crazy Croquet, I no longer seemed to be able to play on a proper grass court at all; or maybe it was the change back to a full-size court.
Eventually my AC skills began to come back to me, but it wasn’t enough to overtake Raghu’s early lead and I lost 17-21. Sadly Paul had a similar experience against Paul Franklin of Phyllis Court and so between us we lost the match.
The next day Blewbury hosted the CqE August Short Croquet tournament. Nineteen players had been entered including some with seriously low handicaps, such as Dave Kibble on four peels, licking their lips at the prospect of playing on our beautiful lawns.
I was somewhat apprehensive after a pretty disastrous week—after all, I had lost seven games out of nine in the previous four days — but maybe it had all been some kind of weird preparation for the Short Croquet tournament, because I played one of my best competitive days in my four-year croquet career. I won all four of my matches, including beating Andy Evason after he had pegged out my first ball, by taking my second ball all the way round to peg on a three-ball break. I also beat the formidable Dave Kibble.
Several others had also won four games, but most had lost one or two as well. Only one other, Adam Huby of Watford, had like me a 100 per cent record. Ideally we should have played each other in a grand final, as we had not previously played each other. However, it was getting late after a long hot day and people needed to get home, so it came down to Joe’s tie-breakers, which he had previously set out for all too see. On this basis — by Joe’s formula I had beaten a better-playing opposition — I was declared the winner and received the lovely engraved glass.
A day later we hosted a friendly match against the Watford players who were coming to the end of their summer tour. I joined for the afternoon match and by chance ending up playing a handicap AC match against the one and the same Adam Huby. Needless to say, I lost!
I offered to give my SC victor’s glass to Adam, but he graciously declined my offer.
The Good Book says that pride comes before a fall. So on the next day with great confidence after my mighty SC victory, I challenged Edmund Shirley to a match on the KMT ladder. I was intending to improve my second from bottom status. Of course I lost!
I now languish at the very bottom of the ladder. But there’s always tomorrow!