Kyabramite Trevor Bassett (right) defeated Callum Hyland to claim the Australian Association Croquet Open Singles Championship. Photos: Supplied.
It's been a long road for Kyabram’s very own croquet ace, but Trevor Bassett has once again found a rich vein of form 20 years after taking the sport by storm.
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Bassett competed in the Australian Association Croquet Open Championships from Sunday, November 16 to Sunday, November 23 at Cairnlea in Melbourne.
It was a successful tournament for the veteran, winning the Open Singles for the first time in more than 20 years and finishing runner-up in the Open Doubles, alongside first-time partner Stephen Pearce.
This is the third singles title for Bassett, after claiming the big one in 2000 and 2004 and finishing runner-up in 2005 – it’s a return to the greatness he has waited more than two decades for.
During his early 2000s era of dominance, Bassett was ranked number two in the world for croquet, a benchmark he seems to be on his way to reaching once more, albeit with more experience this time around.
At the Australian AC Open Championships, Bassett went through the block stage undefeated, progressing through to the knockout stage and then past the quarter-finals 2-0 and squeezing through to the final after winning his semi 2-1 in a best-of-three match.
The final was a best-of-five match against Callum Hyland with Bassett dropping the first game, but was able to course-correct and take the second and third.
Bassett was unable to close the match out in the fourth, with the contest coming down to the wire, before finally returning to glory and claiming the title in the fifth game.
“It certainly wasn't all my own way once I got to the semis, but obviously after a 20-year gap, it was nice to finally float to the top again,” he said.
“Back in 2004, winning was second nature to me and then slowly, but surely, you started to have mental issues and the game deteriorated.
Stephen Pearce and Bassett were runners-up in the Australian Association Croquet Open Doubles Championships.
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“I kept playing through it all and, because I'd always played top-level croquet, I tend to only enter the major events, so I don't get any sort of easy victories wherever I go.
“So, it was nice to finally get back up there.”
Earlier in November, Bassett travelled to Canberra and won the NSW Australian Bronze Medal and will compete against the other state winners for the Australian Gold and Silver Medals in Perth in April.
The Bronze Medal is another event that Bassett hadn’t won for more than 20 years, with his last triumph occurring in 2003.
With his win at the Aus AC Championships and a potential Gold Medal on the cards in Perth, Bassett is gunning for Australian representation in the MacRobertson International Croquet Shield.
The competition is the premier croquet team event in the world and is currently competed for by Australia, England, New Zealand and the US.
The most recent series was held in 2022 in Australia and was won by England, with the next to be held in 2026 in England.
Bassett is in the squad for that tournament, but being able to play in that shield would be a dream come true for him and is considered to be the ‘Olympics of croquet’.
“There's an Australian team of six players heading over to England and I'm vying for selection at the moment,” he said.
“It’d be pretty incredible to be part of that, considering it is the centenary of the tournament.
“There's a squad of nine players currently, they're going to select six from that nine, so, I'm in the squad, so I'm in with the chance, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
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