The Evening Standard, 31 May 2001
Bankers are on a roll in City croquet contest
By Indira Das-Gupta

click to enlarge

CITY bankers are exchanging the markets for mallets and hoops, with croquet occupying the financial heart of London. Glorious sunshine greeted the launch of the croquet season on the lawn at Exchange Square in Bishopsgate, where city workers are competing in the annual tournament held during lunch breaks and after work.

Teams from large City institutions are masquerading behind joke names. Kleinwort Benson staff are the Bent Hoops, MSM International is Sonny and Shares, Bloomberg has become Terminal Strength and Leopold Joseph are the Maidens with Mallets.

Organiser Nicola Williams, from the pub chain Corney & Barrow, said: "It's a brilliant idea and gives office workers something unusual to do at lunchtimes and evenings, especially in the current good weather.

"Some people are taking it very seriously and have bought their own mallets."

The Vetive Clicquot Croquet League runs until 18 July with the winners collecting a trophy. The players have paid a £25 entry fee. Meanwhile Londoners may think the warm weather of the past four weeks has been exceptional after such a long and dreary winter, but experts say May has only been marginally above average. Records show that while it has been the hottest May in nine years it is still a considerable way off that of 1992, which saw the highest mean temperatures since 1833.

Comments by two former competitors - from the Nottingham List croquet newsgroup 04/06/2001

This is an annual event run by Corney & Barrow, sponsored by Veuve Cliquot, and played on a piece of lawn in Exchange Square, behind Liverpool St Station in the City. The lawn is crap, 3/4 size, grass about 2" long, loose wide hoops, and a great leveller, though knowing how to play usually helps, but not always.

The rules are doubles 6pt golf with an extra hoop at 3-3. The rules are a bad adaptation of golf rules, including such things as not being able to hit a hoop in a follow through. Entry fee is only about £25, mainly goes to charity, and the final usually gets the press along, with some C-list celebs like Tim Rice and that bird who drank Martini on the way from paradise to Luton airport. Prize last time was a Jeroboam of champagne to each of the winners, and a magnum to the runners up. Mulliner & partner got to the final against me and partner about 2 years ago, though Mulliner couldn't make it but his stand-in won the game for them with a 20 foot final hoop: we got a picture in the Daily Telegraph following that, which was the day after Princess Di's funeral, and there weren't many other pictures in the paper that day.

The best thing about it is playing in Exchange Square at lunchtime which is usually inundated with top totty seeking suntans... no candidates for the "Pull a Pig" night at Cheltenham this weekend Ed!

Jeremy Dyer


This is a rather good Golf Croquet tournament played in Triton Square, near Liverpool Street station. It is played over the summer with teams divided into blocks and the block winners then play a knock-out to decide the winner. I can modestly claim to have won it in 1997 as part of the Tokai Triplers. We were beaten in 1998 by a team that also had some serious croquet experience. Quite a number of retired tournament players came out of the wood-work, some using their own mallets!

Stephen Mulliner

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