[First published in the Croquet Gazette Issue 409, June 2024]
Article by Giles Pepperell
Name
Keith Aiton
Home Club
Nottingham Croquet Club
Potted playing history – from first picking up a mallet to current play - including what influenced you to start.
I first picked up a mallet aged about 10. An old school fried of my mother’s came to stay and suggested we buy a garden set, so we did. The rules in the box were very similar to US rules, with sequence and deadness. We probably played a bit each summer for a few years. Then I was lucky enough to go to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and saw real croquet for the first time. I didn’t play seriously in my first year but got hooked in my second. My partner and I made it to the semi-final of Cuppers. Richard Hilditch was two years ahead of me at Sidney Sussex, and he inspired me to go find my local club back home in Nottingham. The first day I went to the club happened to be the finals day of the annual tournament in 1980. I remember seeing Geoffrey Taylor from Cheltenham beat George Noble in the A class play-off.
Three years later I got to the final of the Open Championship, losing to Nigel Aspinall, and won the Chairman’s Salver. I then played pretty much continuously for the next 30 years or so.
In 2005, after a mallet change, I went from 69th in the rankings to 4th and won the President’s Cup. The next year I played in the MacRobertson Shield in Australia. I played again in 2010 as captain, managing to score the winning point to make sure Great Britain retained the trophy.
Your finest or proudest achievement and shot.
I’ve always been attracted to opportunities to display skill, two examples, which I believe are still unique, being a triple peel I completed on the third turn of a game at an Oxford tournament in 1988, and an octuple peel I completed in a Solomon Trophy test match at Heaton Park in 2008.
Mallets
Please tell us about your mallet and why you chose it (maker, etc., no detail too small, shaft/head materials, head weight, dimensions, one piece handle, grip material, etc.). What mallets have you had before? Do you have different mallets for AC and GC or lawn types/conditions?
The first mallet I owned was a Solomon mallet by Jaques. In 2005 I bought a mallet from Alan Pidcock, which took me to a new level.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
I started to develop an annoying tremor around 2010, so, having played with an Irish grip since 1985, I tried playing standard grip again and even Solomon grip to see if that made a difference. Raouf Allim suggested that playing left-handed could be a fix, and that has helped. However, I think I would need to invest quite a lot of time to develop enough power to play back at the elite level, so for the last six years or so I have just played in the Inter Counties.