Explainer: What is the sport of Lawn Bowls & what are its rules

The Indian women's team assured themselves of a first CWG medal in the sport on Monday.

On Monday the Indian women's team assured itself of a first Commonwealth Games medal in the sport of Lawn Bowls. The Indian team featuring Lovely Choubey, Pinki, Nayamoni Saikia, Rupa Rani Tirkey beat New Zealand 16-13 in the semis of the women's focus lawn bowls event.

Many would be wondering about this new game, Lawn Bowls that is making rounds in the Commonwealth Games 2022, Birmingham. However, this sport Lawn Bowls is not new. It is a pretty old sport that has been the core at the CWG since its inception. It has been regularly introduced at the CWG since 1930.

India has been also participating in this sport for quite some time. It first participated in 2010 and in Birmingham, it has sent a strong 10-member Bowls squad at the games this time around.

Many are not aware of this sport and  about the format and the rules, so here is a detailed look at it:-

Format

Lawn Bowls is played on a green stretch of land. The sport has also been called as Outdoor Bowls. It basically has four formats – Singles, Pairs, Triples and Fours. All the formats are named after the number of people in each team. Only two teams can complete in a single Lawn Bowls game. The weight of the bowl is around 1.5kgs.

Rules

- This sport involves rolling the bowl down in the long green stretch land with the aim of placing it closer to the target, known as ‘Jack.’

 - The team who manages to place it closer to the jack, wins the points.

- The game starts with a team rolling ‘the Jack’ from one end towards the opposite end which has to travel at least 23m. The point at which it settles becomes the ultimate target for the players to place the bowl from that end.

- Then each team takes turns one to roll their bowls. The format decides the number of attempts per team from each end. In the singles format, each team gets four attempts while in other formats, a team gets two throws per player. In the four-player format, each team gets to throw eight throws, or rolls, from one end.

- The points are determined by the number of bowls a team has managed to place closer to the jack than their opponent.

- The scores are then calculated to decide the winner. In singles, the first player to reach 21 points wins the match. In the rest of the formats, the bowl is rolled from 18 different ends. The team with the most points after 18 ends of throw is declared as the winner.

England have so far dominated the sport, as they have grabbed 51 medals – Gold (20), Silver (9), Bronze (22). While more recently, Australia have taken the lead. Australia won five gold and two silver medals at the 2018 Gold Coast CWG.

Indian Squad for Lawn Bowls

Men’s: Sunil Bahadur(Singles, Pairs), Mridul Borgohain(Pairs, Fours), Dinesh Kumar(Triples, Four), Navneet Singh(Triples, Fours), Chandan Kumar Singh(Triples, Fours).

Women’s: Nayanmoni Saikia(Singles, Pairs), Lovely Choubey(Pairs, Fours), Tania Choudhary (Triples, Fours) , Rupa Rani Tirkey(Triples, Fours), Pinki(Triples, Fours).

For more updates, follow Khel Now on Twitter, and Instagram and join our community on Telegram.