Sarroff, through persistence, gets this one. Croquet ...

Croquet has an image problem. Interestingly this has almost always been the case; there's just always been something a bit dubious about it. Imported into England from Ireland at some murky historical point, it became the first game that young ladies were allowed to play outdoors with men.

"Croquet parties" became the vogue and, from presumably innocent beginnings, there soon ensued such levels of drinking, smoking, gambling and flirtation that, when tennis superseded it in popularity in the 1890s, the triumph of the newer racquet sport over the older with the mallets was generally attributed to croquet's "unsavoury reputation".

Its public relations difficulties these days are of an entirely different order - it is perceived as a boring game for the old and infirm. Such perceptions are not entirely without merit. My editor here at The Mercury told me he once interviewed a member of a croquet club in Sydney who, upon being asked about the nature of croquet's failing fortunes, told him, "It's not so much the game that's dying as the players."

RELATED CONTENT:

Still, as anybody who's had a go at it will acknowledge, there is so much more to the sport than just being an excuse for apathetic socialising in the sun. It really can be, as it has been described, "a nasty game played by nice people".

They say that about it because of that facet of the game whereby, with your ball touching your opponent's, you are able to place your foot on your ball, keeping it in place, and, with an entirely graceless swipe at it with your mallet, send your opponent searching for theirs in an adjacent postcode. How far you hit it, is entirely up to you. As has been often remarked upon, the game has an uncanny tendency to bring out people's worst ... It really should be more popular.

Croquet's real problem lies in its inability to get an international set of rules codified. It's a simple game in essence. You have a series of numbered gates; everybody has a different coloured ball and a mallet; you hit your ball through the gates. Easy.

Rules-wise, however, apart from those simple beginning principles, everybody does it differently. There are far too many versions of the game to even begin listing them here. There are in excess of five forms played in Australia alone.

Still, such flexibility may eventually be the making of croquet and the game may yet prove the doomsayers wrong. More recently it's had quite a popular resurgence in parts of Europe where it is played in a backyard variety whereby, rather than on a manicured lawn, the course is set up over the uneven terrain of people's yards, incorporating all the typical features - gardens, trees, pools, furniture - and so necessitating quite a bit of improvisation with the rules, which vary from house to house.

Like our cricket.

I found an article recently purporting to list, "the eleven undisputed rules of Backyard Cricket".

I can assure you that, from my end, "undisputed" they most certainly were not.

The article began poorly with guidelines on "Choosing Teams". Nonsense. There are no teams in backyard cricket! What would be the point? Anybody not batting is fielding! Backyard cricket is the very epitome of an individual sport. Your sole goal is to get into bat and then stay there for as long as possible.

There are two standard approaches to deciding who bats. You can either establish an order (which is fairest) or make it so that you have to earn it by performing the successful bowling, catching or stumping that has removed the last batsman. (This can have the benefit of focusing on what could be otherwise fairly ramshackle fielding.)

Other rules listed were much more solid:

"You can't get out on the first ball" - I'm not sure it's the best of rules, and it would certainly seem to protect children unduly and unnecessarily from learning about life's harsher realities, but you just can't argue with that level of convention.

"No LBW" - Fair enough. It's just unenforceable. Everybody wants to bat; the impartiality required for fit and proper LBW adjudication just doesn't exist in this environment.

There was advice on "hit and run". Further nonsense. We do not run in backyard cricket. Scoring is achieved through accurate shotmaking. Hitting the back fence is four runs. Singles and twos are awarded for hitting various landmarks according to the level of difficulty. Threes are unusual but tend, conventionally, to be given for striking a pet.

Over the fence is, of course, six, and out, and the exiting batsman has to retrieve the ball no matter what suburban horrors may await on the other side.

The "undisputed rules" also mentions (favourably if you can believe it...) the inexcusable trend towards this "if you catch it after one bounce in one hand then it's out" bollocks. When did this start?

Somebody needs to put an end to this atrocity. It needs to be stamped out. It is just not cricket!

It is also worth mentioning, I reckon, while we're here, backyard cricket's often under-acknowledged counterpart - "frontyard cricket" - which is not as common as it used to be.

Frontyard cricket is played on the driveway with the rollerdoor utilised as 'backstop.' Most of the rules are the same as out the back, but in this form the roller door is also deemed to function as 'automatic wickie.' A nicked ball to the offside that hits the door is considered to have entered the domain of an infallible wickie/slips cordon and you are automatically out, caught behind.

In some locales you may be given out caught behind down leg but this is not the norm - probably best to get that straight before you don the grasshopper gloves ...

Also differing: Six in the front yard is over the road on the full and, generally, does not mean that you're out.

And, unlike out the back where play is discontinued with the breaking of a window or inconsolable tears, stumps is called in the front yard with the loss of the ball down the stormwater drain.

Do you know you can subscribe to get full access to all Maitland Mercury stories? Subscribing supports us in our local news coverage. To subscribe, click here.