Kyabram croquet player Trevor Bassett will represent Australia later this year, having recently won the Australian Gold Medal at the Australian Association Croquet Championships.
Kyabram croquet star Trevor Bassett has been selected to represent Australia at the 2026 MacRobertson Shield this year.
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Bassett’s selection not only represents the opportunity for the local to take part in one of croquet’s most prestigious international competitions, but marks the end of his 20-year hiatus from the national team set-up.
The MacRobertson Shield will be held in the UK from July 24 to August 9, Bassett being one of six in the Australian side, with participation at this level considered one of the highest honours a player can achieve in the sport.
It has been a whirlwind few weeks for Bassett, who also recently had success at the 76th Australian Association Croquet Championships in Perth, where over 60 players competed from around the country.
The Kyabram native played in three events across 12 days of competition, before returning home with two accolades.
Bassett’s first triumph was in the gold and silver medals competition, contested between the six current state winners, with the Kyabramite having won the NSW Australian Bronze Medal back in November, which qualified him for this event.
He was the third seed going into the competition, which sees each player partake in a double round-robin format with 10 games in total.
After dropping his first game to a lower-ranked player, Bassett bounced back by winning his next six matches, with this run including three wins by a score of 26-0.
Bassett went on to take out eight games to finish first, ending up two wins clear of the runner-up and recording an impressive net hoops score of +121 to claim the Australian Gold Medal.
His other success came in the Eire Cup, a format where six state teams, consisting of eight players — four men and women — compete against each other for the national teams title.
After finishing first in the round-robin phase with a perfect record, Bassett’s NSW side narrowly defeated the reigning champion, Victoria, in the final, winning 11 games to nine on the final day of the championships.
“I’ve played all the way through, and it’s nice to get a couple up towards the top again,” Bassett said.
Trevor Bassett in action at the championships.
On the Victoria team were fellow Kyabram players Kerri-Ann Organ and Bassett’s wife Claire, who was the captain.
Both croquet players for many years, one of Trevor or Claire would often have to stay home to look after their children while the other played at a tournament, but this time they were able to make an exception due to the timing of the championships.
“Kids being a bit older, on school holidays, it allowed us both to compete in the same event,” Bassett said.
“We did actually pair up against each other in the doubles, which was amusing to all of those floating around.”
That meeting was of course in the Eire Cup final, where the husband and wife faced each other in one of the doubles games, with Trevor and Alison Sharpe defeating Claire and Felix Gelman White 26-12.
Elsewhere in the finals match-ups, Organ won her doubles and one of her singles, while Trevor added a singles win to the aforementioned doubles triumph.
Bassett also competed in the men’s singles, finishing 10th after being knocked out in the second round, but it was a successful tournament overall, and another where he reclaimed previous successes many years later.
It was the second time the Ky local won the gold and silver medals competition, 26 years after his first triumph in 2000, a familiar feeling he had in back in November when he won the open singles for the first time in over 20 years at the Australian Association Croquet Open Championships.
“One of the places we went to, I had my 21st birthday at that venue, playing in these championships,” Bassett said.
“So I was able to tell the kids about those sorts of stories, a bit of a flashback.”
There was also another event at the championships involving Ky representation, the women’s singles, where Claire and Organ both reached the semi-finals.
Organ had a strong run, not dropping a single set until the semi-final, where she fell in a close defeat to Heather Knight from Queensland, the Ky resident winning the first set 23-22, narrowly losing the second 22-21, before dropping the third tie-breaker 26-11.
Claire had a tougher path, negotiating two three-set matches in the second round and quarter-finals, before Trevor’s aforementioned doubles partner Sharpe proved too strong in the semi-finals.
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