The rather strange game of croquet sees players with mallets hitting balls through hoops and has always had a rather upper-class feel. Though the game has distinct Englishness, helped by its explosive popularity in England in 1860, its origins, as its name would suggest are more likely to be French.
There is some doubt though, as different historians trace the history in different ways. The brochure for the Coupe des Alpes tournament of 1992, for example, claimed origins in France back to the eleventh century, though no evidence appears to exist to back this up.
The word “croquet” though is almost certainly of French origin, being a version of “crochet”, which comes from “croc” meaning a crook, the original shape of the stick before the more common mallets appeared.
Origins of Croquet
The two popular theories of the origins of croquet are, first, that it grew from the game paille maille (pall mall) from the Latin words for ball and mallet and came to England from France in the seventeenth century and, secondly, that it arrived in Britain from Ireland in the 1850s. There is evidence to back the latter up in the form of a game called crookey played in Ireland in 1934.
What is known is that its growth in popularity in England during the 1860s was phenomenal. The first written rules of the game came from a Mr Spratt in 1851. He passed those rules on to John Jacques, who made croquet equipment and wanted a published set of rules to sell as well. By 1867, he had printed 65,000 copies of the rules. This was followed by a series of three articles in The Field magazine on the tactics of the game by Walter Jones Whitmore.
The existence of both rules and manufactured equipment helped spread the game to other countries, notably those with strong links with England such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA.
Rise and Fall of Croquet
The first official body to govern the game was the All England Croquet Club, formed in 1868. But with the growth in popularity of tennis at the same time, the club soon changed its name to the All England Croquet & Lawn Tennis Club and in 1877 held a tennis tournament in Wimbledon, the origin of the now-famous annual tournament. In 1882, the name changed again to the All England Lawn Tennis Club, reflecting the decline in popularity of croquet. The word “croquet” was inserted back into the name in 1899.
The game though continued to grow in popularity in North America where the Newport Croquet Club from Rhode Island can trace its origins back to 1865. The USA published its own “Croquet – Its Principles and Rules” in 1871. And in 1882, the National American Croquet Association was formed.
The existence of the sport both sides of the Atlantic led to it being introduced as an Olympic sport in 1900, but there were now disputes between England and the USA over the rules. England was playing a six-hoop layout while the Americans had a nine-loop layout. The six-loop version was played in 1900 Olympics and the nine-loop version at the 1904 Olympics. It never appeared again at the Olympics.
Croquet Today
There are now many versions of the rules of the game, but two versions – association croquet and golf croquet – are played in international tournaments. The USA has its own rules for domestic tournaments.
The leading countries in international association tournaments are still England, Australia, New Zealand and the USA, with the same four along with Egypt and South Africa doing well in golf croquet tournaments.
Steve Rogerson - Steve Rogerson is a UK-based writer specialising in television, technology, sports and beer.
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