Croquet is the perfect sport for social distancing

In Mr Alton’s absence, I thought readers might want a column about sport. The problem is that I’m largely indifferent to most sports.

But I will berate the All England Club for cancelling the Wimbledon Championship. Fair enough, I can see that tennis might be a problem what with all the loud, virus-spreading grunting, but I think it’s time we reminded them they are the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Shockingly, last time I went there on a corporate jag, I could see no evidence of the superior game being played.

Yet croquet is a game where social distancing poses no problems. If you sold the rights to Sky and brought in new technology (‘We now go live to the hoop-cam to see Fothergill attempt the triple peel’), you could turn an unfairly neglected sport into something big — just as the need to sell colour TVs prompted the BBC to rekindle interest in snooker.

I do welcome the absence of football, though. In particular, the assumption that we must all share the belief that it is a particularly fine sport. It isn’t. At a physical level, behind the glitz, football is to rugby what Riverdance is to Rogers and Astaire: a self-imposed disability disguised as a skill. At a philosophical level, there is no sport where the line between intention and luck is more blurred.

Here’s how I rank sports. At the top are sports where players make decisions at their own pace in their own good time. These are generally games of pure ability, untainted by the need for physical fitness: snooker, darts, chess, Train Simulator 2020, Scrabble, golf, poker, croquet and, of course, bowls. These are also sports where you can drink while playing.