There was a hush around the court as a 65-year-old former mayor of Haslemere lay chest down upon the lawn, staring intently across the grass at a white metal gate a few yards away. The top match in the quarter-finals of the Simon Carter Croquet World Championship had reached a crucial stage and the oldest competitor needed this point badly.

Stephen Mulliner had practised this very shot many, many times. On a four-yard alley that he had built in his house, he has been hitting ball after ball through a hoop, 50 times a day for the past three weeks, until he felt that his arms and the mallet were swinging as one, but when you are two games down in a best-of-five match against