A brief experiment with a shot clock during a nine-wicket croquet match

A few weeks ago, I had my first opportunity to be a part of a croquet match that utilized an actual shot clock. We were holding a best-of-two semifinal for the Kansas City Croquet Club Club Singles Championship with the format being nine-wicket croquet played according to MCA Advanced Nine-Wicket Croquet Rules with handicaps. For players unfamiliar with this version, it is similar to US Rules (American Six Wicket). There are a handful of differences, but the most significant is that nine-wicket is played with a different hoop layout that is more friendly to break running.

I was on hand for set up and potential open play, but it happened to be a day where we didn’t have extra players. So, both semifinalists agreed with my request to run a shot clock for the match.

The rules call for a 45-second shot clock and I utilized the lap function from my iPhone timer app, which provided a history of the length for each shot. Once the match started, I quickly figured out that shot clock operator is pretty much a single-function job, demanding relatively intense focus. Initially, I was having operator errors in the sense that sometimes I would hit the lap function a bit too early — prior to when the ball would stop rolling. 

So, the history had some short shot periods (laps) recorded. But I did get the hang of it and would say I made that error about 6-8 times for the two games played and I believe all of those were in game one. The lap function served the purpose well, but it would be nice to be able to export the data. Including the errors, game one had 210 shots and game two had 155. Game one had two extra last rounds. As I mentioned, the data was not exportable, but subjectively the range was usually 10-20 seconds.

WHAT I LEARNED

I am not sure I understand the US Rules (American Six Wicket) concept of not waiting until an out-of-bounds (OOB) ball is reset before starting the opponent’s clock until under 15 minutes. Seems like that could actually be dead time for the shot clock, but I suppose wording or incentive around expediting the setting of the OOB ball would be needed.

The experiment showcased how often a player tends to shoot prior to a ball being reset on the boundary. In 95 percent of these scenarios, there would be a near zero percent chance of the game being affected, but it still seems a little weird. Like hitting a ball before the previously shot ball is still rolling.

Subjectively, I felt the players had higher-scoring games than they normally would. We play a lot of 50-minute games for open play and these match games were 60 minutes. I looked at the average total game scores for the two players over this season and factored in a 20 percent increase to calculate a normal average of 34.53. The games in this match were 43 and 37 for an average of 40. Certainly, there is not enough data and with different time frames, I’m not drawing any conclusions. I really just wanted to note my impression and throw a bit of the numbers.

Complications

For guidance on running a shot clock, I couldn’t find documentation on restarting the shot clock when match time is called. I’ve been reminded a few times that when a rule doesn’t explicitly state parameters, you should not infer. However, this experiment definitely helped me form an opinion. In a timed game, I think it is a practical stoppage point that should be an official timeout — both players should acknowledge first ball and maybe score, clips and deadness accuracy. Then a full new shot clock should start. I view this as being similar to football (American) and no matter what, in practice, there always seems to be a conversation about first ball at a minimum when time is called and it would seem unfair to count that time against the striker.

Extending on that concept, should you get a full new shot clock after a timeout? For practical reasons, I would like to think you should. That would follow the football approach, but notably in basketball, the shot clock remains the same. Based on the amateur nature of croquet and the reliance on volunteers and the clock equipment generally utilized, putting a shot clock operator in a scenario after a timeout with one second on the clock could create some challenging judgment calls. However, if you restart after a timeout, that means a player could effectively eat up 90 seconds of clock game time, which changes the end game quite a bit. 

Another consideration, US Rules indicate that a player’s turn ends if they don’t shoot prior to the shot clock expiration. I would suggest it should default to a time-out and only go to loss of shot if the player has no more timeouts. Why? Both from a logical perspective and also practicality. If a player strikes the ball at 46 seconds, that is an out-of-turn play and that means there has to be a ball reset, which always creates a judgment call on replacement positions. I think it would be better to avoid that reset by charging the timeout if available.

THE SHOT CLOCK IMPACT

One of the biggest shocks for the players seemed to be the actual fixed one-minute period for a timeout. That alone really sped things up. Further, I think the players were completely caught out by having an active clock and limit of time per shot and for time outs during the last turns segment of the games. In my experience, players tend to drastically extend all elements in last turns and in this area alone having a shot clock improved the game significantly.

While in general, I felt the clock was an improvement, one aspect did raise a concern for me. When, as the shot clock operator, I called out 30 seconds as a 15-second warning, sometimes the opponent would start a conversation with the striker. That certainly creates a problem and I think the answer would be that the opponent should not be distracting the striker. Which, painfully, might require additional rules?

More of an issue though, I see that as potentially damaging to the social, fun back and forth of the game. Likely though, shot clock operators would primarily be used in formal tournament play and open club play might retain that more casual element. But even from the formal shot clock perspective, maybe there are ways to improve the scenario — like maybe the shot clock should be stopped when game information is questioned (which does seem to happen with the game clock).

Overall, I felt the players did play somewhat faster. I would speculate that it was primarily due to being aware that there was an official shot clock. And notably, I felt it wasn’t really the in-turn play that sped up, it was primarily those moments at the beginning or end of a turn where a player had to think through the best tactical choice. And certainly, I am a fan of limits there.

FINAL THOUGHTS

To be clear, I am not intending to advocate for a shot clock in AC or golf croquet. That’s another discussion. This experiment was targeted at addressing better enforcement of rules as they are written for US Rules and nine-wicket croquet, which are both timed games. I felt like it was a good experiment and I would like to see more games played with shot clock operators to see what more data would reveal. I certainly plan to take additional opportunities when we can find a willing volunteer to take on what is a pretty challenging job.

— Dylan Goodwin, Kansas City Croquet Club President