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blue turning red and thus turning black) and the ‘drag effect’ (of red on black – much like the pull of a normal croquet stroke) cancel out; black would then travel due north, despite red splitting off that line. So much for cannons – perhaps interesting, but rarely of real value! However, (for armchair croquet players, at least!) this shows the potential for being able to play split croquet strokes without pull, by putting spin on the striker’s ball (ie. making the mallet act like the blue ball in the 3‐ball cannon). Methods of putting sideways spin on the striker’s ball are well known; eg. many players make use of the sweep shot to get out of trouble when close to a hoop. Another useful stroke, less used, is the slice (Figure 2a). The aim with the slice is not usually to put spin on the ball, but to be able to have a good swing at the ball (whilst avoiding the hoop) – to do so well, you need to account for the spin that the mallet will inevitably put on the ball (this draws the ball slightly in the direction the mallet is moving, rather than perfectly perpendicular to the mallet face).
The general scheme is shown in Fig 2b. For there to be zero pull, the rotational speed of the ball must match the lateral speed of the striker’s ball – much like the relative speed of a wheel rolling on a road is zero at the very bottom of the wheel (and if the wheel is rolling at a constant speed, then the wheel presses directly downwards rather than pushing forward or back). However, this part of the theory is not of much use in estimating anything about angles; the rotation imparted for a particular set of angles will depend on your mallet face – so at this point, it’s back to empirically finding what works for you. (Note that this stroke is less risky with a wide mallet head; it’s easy to bevel by accident). For an indication of effect size, a result with my mallet is shown in Fig 3.
Even if not deliberately making use of slice (to reduce/cancel pull, etc), this shows that being consistent with how one strikes the ball (i.e., without slicing it slightly by accident), will help to keep the amount of pull consistent. Finally, I should note that I’ve laid this out as though the dynamics are simple. In reality, there are many complications; for instance, with most croquet strokes, the croqueted ball starts by rotating backwards very briefly, due to the front of the striker’s ball moving downwards. This means that (even when playing without slice) the pull direction is, very momentarily, reversed. When playing a powerful full‐ or pass‐roll, this may be what leads to ‘reverse pull’ (identified by Reg Bamford some years ago). Figure 3: mallet pointing half a mallet length (5.5 inches) right of the upright, mallet swinging through a line toward a point 19 inches right of the upright.
07929 940893 mlstuchfield@gmail.com Marie Stuchfield
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