Anyone for tchoukball?

The rules of cheeseminton are simple. Just as in ordinary badminton, a shuttlecock must be biffed energetically over a net by opposing players and a point is scored when the shuttlecock hits the ground. Unlike ordinary badminton, however, that point is annulled if, before the shuttlecock lands, the opponent nibbles off the hunk of cheese stuck to its tip.

Cheeseminton is not, as yet, an Olympic-accredited sport. It also lacks a national association. In fact, it has yet to be played anywhere in the world. But, as its creator, I can envisage it being embraced by the public — imagine the potential for cheeseminton and wine parties. For the dairy-intolerant, cheese could be swapped with tofu.

The game would, however, have to compete with a wave of unconventional new sports already vying for people’s attention: blokarting (street yachting, if you can imagine that), kickball (softball played with the feet and a lightweight football), octopush (underwater ice hockey), footbag (the cool name for keeping a hacky sack in the air), roller hockey (as it sounds, and already wellestablished), goalball (originally designed for blind players, it involves blacked-out goggles and having a ball thrown at you), paddleball (not sure what this is, but it uses oversized plastic table tennis paddles) and tchoukball (handball meets dodgeball with trampolines for nets).

All these activities repurpose an existing sport, some adapting the rules of several into an often more complicated form. Their names are always conjunctions of the old and the new: ‘karting” is old, ‘blo” is new; balls are old, paddles, distinctly new.

Often an ideology accompanies the game, though few can compete with the tchoukball charter. It was laid down by its inventor, Herman Brandt, and states boldly in its opening clause: ‘The game excludes any striving after prestige, whether personal or collective.”

This sentiment, it needs to be said, goes directly against the abiding principles of cheeseminton. Why would anybody want to invent a sport? And why so many of them?

Often, players of a more traditional sport decide they want to make things more interesting for themselves. Another cause is a simple enthusiasm for experimentation — particularly evident in the ever-growing roster of extreme sports (ladies and gentlemen, I give you street luge). But some of the latest sporting innovations have taken a less organic route.

Night tennis made its debut last autumn in a university sports hall outside Madrid. Played on a customised court smaller than normal, it has several new rules: the game is played against the clock, serves have to land in the back of the court, scoring goes from one to nine and extra points are awarded for trick shots. But the biggest changes are off the court. Played in a blacked-out space, the balls are neon and the players are bedecked in neon face paint. Spectators at the debut game waved glowsticks, quaffed drinks from the licensed bar and wiggled enthusiastically to the beats of superstar DJs flown in for the occasion.

Night tennis was not inspired by the World Tennis Association; it is the brainchild of telecommunications manufacturer Sony Ericsson.

‘The background idea was to leverage the fact that Sony Ericsson sponsors the women’s professional tour,” says Merran Wrigley, part of the PR team that devised the sport. ‘We were looking for interesting ways of moving the game beyond the court, of engaging with people who watch on TV, but don’t necessarily buy tickets to a match.”

Could night tennis prove to be the new Twenty20, the shortform version of cricket that appears to have attracted a new audience to the game?

Since Madrid, there has been one more night tennis event, in Miami. It was hoped that a third would be held in the United Kingdom ahead of Wimbledon. Wrigley says the prospect of further events are now in the hands of national associations.

So, without wishing to distress any potential future cheeseminton sponsors (I’m looking at you, Le Roule), it seems far easier to invent a sport than find an audience for it. Take speedminton, tipped in the occasional magazine article and with a flashy website boasting of the outdoor thrills offered by a new form of shuttlecock — a speeder — that weighs more than its traditional cousin and has a ‘streamlined basket”. While buying the equipment is easy, trying to find anyone to play it with is difficult.

Barry Martin, who had hoped to be the first to take the speedminton craze to the UK, admits it has not captured the public imagination. ‘The Germans have told me to stop running the site. They’ve handed the licence over to a company that makes concrete ping-pong tables.”

The creators of speedminton recently invented blackminton, which is played in the dark on a tripartite court and features the customary neon face paint. But it also seems to be struggling: ‘Someone just took a racket and stuck a glowstick in the handle,” says Martin.

Whether all these sports will catch on remains to be seen. But there will be no tiring of innovation itself. Sport England chief executive Jennie Page stresses the need for new activities, especially for kids and at night.

‘Twenty20 under floodlights really brought in a different audience. Cricket has been great at taking the game outside of its formal setting — they’ve literally been sending stars out on to the streets and just getting kids to play with a bat and ball.”

But there appears to be more enthusiasm for midnight basketball. ‘To be honest, it stops some of the kids from raising hell at night. You have to take sport to where the people are.” —