The peculiarly British sports of croquet and bowls are taking baby steps to return from the COVID-19 lockdown, away from the glare of publicity.
Both conjure up images of elderly people pitting their wits against each other on lush lawns, with social interaction a big factor.
The British government’s easing of restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus paved the way for croquet and bowls to resume.
Photo: AFP
The Croquet Association welcomed the chance to start up again, marketing itself as an ideal sport in unusual times.
“Media reports on lockdown easing have focused on sports like golf, tennis and basketball, with the glaring omission of croquet, which is the perfect social-distancing sport,” the association said in a statement. “A croquet court is twice the size of a tennis court, so playing against a member of your household, or one other person from outside your household, is no problem at all.”
Croquet — which has two forms, golf croquet and association croquet — is seen as quintessentially English. Former British prime minister Winston Churchill replaced a tennis court at his Chartwell home with a croquet lawn.
However, the origin of the sport is disputed by Jonathan Isaacs, chairman of the Croquet Association council.
“All I can say is that in the Bayeux Tapestry there is an image of a person with a mallet, hoops and ball, so the indications are it came over with William the Conqueror” in 1066, he told reporters.
Isaacs said that the coronavirus shutdown had proved a headache, but he remained upbeat about the future of the sport.
“Fortunately, as a governing body we have pretty robust finances behind us and we had enough money in a contingency fund to be able to say: ‘Yeah, we can see a way through this’ and offer loans to clubs who have problems,” he said. “Clubs so far have not taken up any offers and appear to be coping reasonably well.”
Isaacs said that at his club, the Sussex County Croquet Club on England’s south coast, which hosted last year’s Golf Croquet World Championship, members rallied around to help the vulnerable.
“We set up a contact rota and phoned them up, but most quite frankly are desperate to get back on the lawn,” he said.
Isaacs said the main challenge was returning to tournament play, but added that one positive was that the game itself “by its definition is an exercise in social distancing.”
“Only one person is on the lawn at any one time. With golf croquet, although two players are on court at the same time the etiquette is the non-playing person stands well clear,” he said.
Legend has it that Elizabethan explorer Francis Drake delayed returning to his ship to confront the Spanish Armada in 1588 to finish a game of bowls.
His modern-day descendants on the greens have had to face a hidden enemy and even though they can now play again, it is not straightforward.
Many players are elderly and the over-70s have been advised to continue to self-isolate despite the partial relaxation of lockdown measures.
“At least half, if not two-thirds, of all bowling members are over 70,” said Rod McBeth, honorary secretary of Sussex County Bowls men’s section.
The county has 4,800 male and 2,700 female members.
McBeth, 75 next month, said it had been a trying time and patience has been wearing thin.
“I am doing jigsaw puzzles, but the inaction has driven me round the twist and if I was of that nature I would get depressed,” he said. “However, I have spoken to a lot of club members who are tearing their hair out.”
Despite his mounting frustration, McBeth will be steering clear of the green for now. Competitions have been deferred until next year and he is wary of the possible risks.
“There is no point in taking a chance for nothing,” he said. “A lot of people who are able to do so will not. They are not sure it is a safe thing to do.”
The Rakuten Monkeys on Sunday downed the CTBC Brothers 2-1, handing the hosts their second consecutive loss in the best-of-seven CPBL Taiwan Series at the Taipei Dome. Monkeys’ ace starter Pedro Fernandez of the Dominican Republic dominated on the mound, cruising through six scoreless innings before giving up a run on a wild pitch in the bottom of the seventh inning. He gave up only three hits and walked two batters in a 93-pitch outing, giving his Taoyuan-based team an edge. Offensively, the Monkeys’ leadoff batter Lin Li hit Brothers starter Brandon Leibrandt’s pitch over the center-field wall in the game’s first at-bat,
The tiny village club of Mjallby AIF on Monday won the top tier Swedish soccer league with a 2-0 away win at IFK Gothenburg, sealing the title with three rounds of matches remaining. Jacob Bergstrom and Tom Pettersson scored the goals in Mjallby’s 20th win in 27 league games. Mjallby has a population of fewer than 1,400 people and plays in an outdated 6,000-seat stadium with stands weathered by the winds of the Baltic Sea. “It’s a huge relief to experience this now, a relief with three games to go,” said Anders Torstensson, a former army officer and secondary-school teacher who coaches the
The Ministry of Sports on Wednesday night called for the Chinese Taipei Football Association (CTFA) to address issues in Taiwanese soccer after national manager Huang Che-ming on Tuesday resigned following Taiwan’s elimination in AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. Taiwan on Tuesday were thrashed 6-1 by Thailand in their Group D tie at Taipei Municipal Stadium. Taiwan finished with no points, after losing all four of their matches, eliminating them from qualifying for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup. Huang made his surprise resignation at a post-match news conference, following three losses since he took over the team from English coach Gary White in August. Huang
HIT AND RUN: Toronto manager John Schneider got his wish that his team ‘find some slug in the air out here,’ as the Blue Jays combined to total 611m of homers Tired in Toronto, the Blue Jays slugged in Seattle. Vladimir Guerrero Jr and George Springer on Wednesday woke up the Jays, as Toronto hit five home runs to rebound from an early deficit, routing the Mariners 13-4 and closing to 2-1 in the American League Championship Series (ALCS). Toronto had 18 hits — all within the first three pitches of each at-bat. “If they give us a first pitch, the pitch that we’re looking for, we’re going to attack and we’re going to be aggressive,” Guerrero said. Seattle starter George Kirby gave up eight of the hits. “I wasn’t really executing when they got
RSS