Lawn Bowling/Bowls

WHAT IS LAWN BOWLING/BOWLS?

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Lawn Bowling (or bowls), is perhaps the oldest of all ball games. It was played in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome and spread to Europe by the 10th century.

The modern lawn Bowls is an outdoor game in which players roll balls about 125mm in diameter) called bowls , over a flat surface called a lawn bowling green very much the same as a golf green. The object is to get as many bowls as possible nearest a target, a smaller ball called the jack which must be rolled a minimum of 23m.

Bowlers must stand with at least one foot on a rubber mat in the center of the rink. The front edge of the mat must be no less than 2m from the ditch.

The bowls are rolled alternately by the opposing players toward the jack that is 6.3cm in diameter. Each bowl nearer the jack than any bowl rolled by an opponent scores a point. Bowls are termed dead if They travel less than 14m from the mat, Come to rest outside the rink, or Go into the ditch without touching the jack.

Bowls that hit the jack on their initial roll are called touchers; they remain live bowls and therefore potential scorers wherever they land including the ditch.

An end is completed when all bowls have been delivered.

Matches may be played for a certain number of ends, usually 14 or 18, or until a particular points total is reached, 21 points in single games. Matches may be played by either individuals (singles) or by teams of two to four players (pairs, triples, and 4s sometimes called rinks.

The game is played mainly in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Hong Kong, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Malaysia and to some extent in the United States. Lawn bowling is also played indoors on artificial surfaces.

The green, on which the game is played, must be at least 34m and not more than 40m square, surrounded by a ditch not less than 200mm or more than 380mm wide and the depth is between 50mm and 200mm. The green and ditch are enclosed by a wooden, or in some countries, a sloping grass bank.

The green is divided lengthwise into six or 8rinks, not less than 5.5m or more than 5.8m wide.

Bowls and Jack

The bowls may not be more than 131mm or less than 116mm and the weight shall not exceed 1.59kg. Originally, They were made of wood (lignum vitae but now are made of a synthetic composition and are biased slightly on one side so that they roll with a curve.

In singles and pairs, each player has four bowls while in triples, each player has three bowls and in fours competition, there are two bowls per player.