The Indian women’s fours team of Rupa Rani Tirkey, Pinki, Nayanmoni Saikia and Lovely Choubey won a historic gold in the women’s four lawn bowl on Day 5 of the Commonwealth Games 2022. The Indian team’s A game against South Africa won them the elusive gold medal with a 17-10 score line. India has managed to reach the semi-finals only twice in history and has finished fourth on other occasions. This year, India achieved the historic feat of winning the gold medal at the event.
However, lawn bowl is not a popular sport in India and very few know about the game. Here is all you need to know about Lawn Bowls.
What is Lawn Bowls?
Lawn Bowls is an outdoor sport that is also known as lawn bowling. It consists of a ball called a bowl that is rolled toward a smaller stationary ball, called a 'jack' or ‘kitty’. Lawn Bowl is generally played on a flat lawn of 40-42 yard (37-38 metre) in length. The main objective in the game is to roll one's bowl in as close as possible to the smaller ball, ‘jack’.
The bowls in Lawn Bowl are also called 'woods' as they were originally made of wood. However, they are now made with composite plastic as it helps the bowls last longer, and also helps in maintaining the same specification each and every time while manufacturing.
The lawn bowls (balls) are not perfectly round, and one side of the balls are slightly bigger than the other, this is known as the 'bias'. They are biased or flattened on one side so that they roll on a curved course. There is also extra weight on one side of the bowl that generates torque to make the curve. Additionally, the different bowls have different biases, the bigger the bias the more the bowl will curve. A bowler to selects a bowl as per the amount of curve they need.
How to play Lawn Bowl?
A Lawn Bowls match begins with a coin toss, and the winner of the toss gets the option to roll the ‘jack’ at least 23 metre down the green. After that the players take turns bowling the bowls, with an aim curve them in as closer as possible to the jack than any of those of their opponents. The points are awarded for each bowl that is closest to the jack.
In singles competition of Lawn Bowls, the first to score 21 points wins, whereas, in pairs, triples, and fours competition, the team that has scores the most points at the end of the game wins. A game of Lawn Bowl consists of a number of ends decided upon before the start of the game or tournament.
Lawn Bowls: How are the points awarded?
As mentioned earlier, points in Lawn Bowl are awarded as per the number of bowls a team places closer to ‘Jack’ than its opponents.
For instance: If Team A places two bowls closer to ‘Jack’ as compared to team B, it will win two points in the end. Also, if the team A has managed to place three bowls closer to the target than team B’s closest bowls, it will earn three points.
(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)
