It quickly spread to other Anglophone countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States. The sport has particularly strong followings in the UK, US, New Zealand, Australia, and Egypt; many other countries also play. Every four years, the top countries play in the World Team Championships in AC (the MacRobertson Shield) and GC (the Openshaw Shield). As well as club-level games, county-level tournaments, and leagues, there are regular world championships and international matches between croquet-playing countries. Little are they aware that such negligence kills rather than to build their enterprise. These extra turns, called “bisques” are effective in levelling the odds of winning. During a turn, a player may earn extra shots in two ways. During a turn, each of the other three balls may only be croqueted once between hoop points, but by stringing together a series of roquets, croquets, and scored hoops, several points may be scored in a single turn. In the 1900 Olympic croquet events, France claimed victory in all three competitions.
Its genesis is mostly in association croquet, but it differs in a number of important ways that reflect the home-grown traditions of American “backyard” croquet. Records show a game called “crookey”, similar to croquet, being played at Castlebellingham in County Louth, Ireland, in 1834, which was introduced to Galway in 1835 and played on the bishop’s palace garden, and in the same year to the genteel Dublin suburb of Kingstown (today Dún Laoghaire) where it was first spelled as “croquet”. The object of the game is to reach a certain number of points, typically seven, earned by being the first to run a hoop. There are also clubs in many universities and colleges, What is a billiards club with an annual Varsity match being played between Oxford and Cambridge. Oxford University Croquet Club. The world’s top 10 association croquet players as of October 2023 were Robert Fletcher (Australia), Robert Fulford (England), Paddy Chapman (New Zealand), Jamie Burch (England), Reg Bamford (South Africa), Matthew Essick (USA), Mark Avery (England), Simon Hockey (Australia), Harry Fisher (England), and Jose Riva (Spain). As of 2023, the Golf Croquet World Champion was Matthew Essick (USA), and the Women’s Golf Croquet World Champion was Jamie Gumbrell (Australia). The current Women’s Association Croquet World Champion (2023) is Debbie Lines of England.
In the American game, roqueting a ball out of bounds or running a hoop so that the ball goes out of bounds causes the turn to end, and balls that go out of bounds are replaced only nine inches (23 cm) from the boundary rather than one yard (91 cm) as in association croquet. Norman Rockwell often depicted the game, including in his painting Croquet. By the late 1870s, however, croquet had been eclipsed by another fashionable game, lawn tennis, and many of the newly created croquet clubs, including the All England Club at Wimbledon, converted some or all of their lawns into tennis courts. According to Mr. Clay, the alteration took place under the following circumstances: “Some sixty or seventy years back (1804-1814), Lord Peterborough having one night lost a large sum of money, the friends with whom he was playing proposed to give the loser a chance, at a quicker game, of recovering his loss. The first explanation is that the ancestral game was introduced to Britain from France during the 1660-1685 reign of Charles II of England, Scotland, and Ireland and was played under the name of paille-maille (among other spellings, today usually pall-mall), derived ultimately from Latin words for ‘ball and mallet’ (the latter also found in the name of the earlier French game, jeu de mail).
Dr. Johnson does not positively derive Whist from the interjectio silentium imperans; he cautiously explains Whist to be “a game at cards, requiring close attention and silence.” Nares, in his Glossary, has “Whist, an interjection commanding silence;” and he adds, “That the name of the game of Whist is derived from this, is known, I presume, to all who play or do not play.” He, however, in his preface, well remarks that he knows “the extreme fallaciousness of the science of etymology when based on mere similarity of sound;” but in the case of Whist, he has allowed similarity of sound to master his judgment. The next shot must move both the player’s ball and the roqueted ball, and it is the “croquet” stroke that gives the game its name. After a point is awarded, all players move on to contest the next hoop. Hoops are contested in a fixed order, with a point awarded to the owner of the first ball to pass through the hoop in the correct direction. The object of the game is to be the first to strike each of their balls through all six hoops in both directions, in a fixed order, and to strike the central peg.