5 minute read
Peeling Basics
By Jeff Soo
Abbreviations used: blUe, Red, blacK, Yellow
A peel is when you cause a ball other than the striker ball to run its wicket*. Peeling is an important part of advanced tactics, but even beginners sometimes have opportunities to try it, most obviously when both your balls are for the same wicket. Peeling a ball just before you score the same wicket with your own ball is known as a straight peel (the term has nothing to do with the angle of the shot).
If you are ball-in-hand directly in front of the wicket, you can peel partner ball through the wicket on the croquet shot, then run the wicket with the continuation shot. Or you can put both balls through on the croquet shot, known as an Irish peel.
If, instead, your partner ball is already in the jaws and you are to the playing side of the wicket, you can peel it on the roquet shot, known as a rush peel. (It’s also possible to rush peel a ball that isn’t in the jaws, but this becomes exponentially more difficult the farther the ball is from the wicket.)
Both peels have risks. If a straight peel fails with partner ball in the jaws, the only way you can score the wicket with your own ball is to jump over the partner ball without touching it. This can be a disaster if the hot ball (the opponent ball that plays next) is also for this wicket.
If you rush peel your partner ball, you are now ball-in-hand on the non-playing side of the wicket. Approaching the wicket from that position requires taking off to just barely miss the wicket, which often results in a long and angled wicket shot. Or even worse, no shot at all if the takeoff comes up short or hits the wicket.
When partner ball is already in the jaws, the ideal method is to roquet it gently enough that it stays in the jaws. This allows a nearly foolproof Irish peel. (I say nearly because less-experienced players often make the mistake of getting both balls through but without leaving an easy shot to roquet partner ball again.) Of course, you must be very close to the ball to have a reasonable chance to roquet it that gently.
When peeling with a croquet shot, the key factors are aligning the balls correctly and striking the ball cleanly. It is a good idea to check the alignment from the non-playing side of the wicket. This takes extra time, though, so if you don’t have a partner to help you with this, you may need to take a timeout to get it right. With more experience, you can learn to sight the balls accurately from the playing side.
Twisting the mallet or striking the ball off center tends to drag the balls off-line, which can cause the peel to fail, the striker ball to end out of position or both. A good pre-shot routine for a croquet-shot peel is to think of it as though it were a normal wicket shot: pretend the croqueted ball isn’t there, aim as you would for a plain wicket shot, focus on the striker ball and play a smooth and relaxed swing.
Remember that it is not a fault if the striker ball catches up to the croqueted ball and hits it on the croquet shot. This is one reason to prefer the Irish peel when you are close enough to the wicket: if the peel sticks in the jaws your ball can then bump it through; if you struck the ball cleanly, the striker ball should end up in the jaws. With practice, Irish peels become quite reliable up to about a foot away from the wicket or up to a foot and a half or so for more advanced players.
A more subtle danger with straight peels is reducing the chance of a useful rush after the wicket. In Figure 1, you have rushed Y to perfect peeling position. But playing the peel makes it very unlikely you will get an eastward rush after the wicket, and for many players, this could make the difference between glorious success and disastrous failure if the obvious 3- (or 4-) ball-break is attempted. If Y is partner dead, this risk may be worth taking, but if Y is clean, it is a fool’s bargain.
We’ll continue with some more advanced peeling situations in the next article.
* The term credits Walter Peel, one of the early stars of croquet and a noted proponent of the maneuver.
