“Is it shot put? Is it hand golf? No, it’s just some strange giant marble game, right?” Dinesh Kumar, India’s No.1 lawn bowler, has heard it all. The World Cup gold medallist isn’t the only one who deals with this predicament as part of his or her daily routine. If anything, every one of the 125-odd lawn bowlers in the country spend as much time playing as they do explaining to everyone else what their unique sport of choice is all about, or more so about what it isn’t. Dinesh doesn’t get rattled or annoyed by the brazen ignorance that lawn bowls has to cope with. There was a time he was as obtuse as the rest of them. And it was his own curiosity that had initially drawn Dinesh to the sport that he now dominates around the world. He’d started his sporting career as a goalkeeper at the East Bengal academy and even played for the junior teams at Mohammedan Sporting. A knee injury had culled his football dreams before he discovered this intriguing activity where a bunch of people stood around trying to roll an odd-shaped ball towards another stationary ball half its size. It didn’t take him too long to get “addicted” to it. Even if his family still doesn’t quite get what the fuss is all about. “They’re happy though whenever they see me on TV,” he says. Unfortunately, for Dinesh and his teammates who’ve been in Australia for nearly a month-and-a-half already as part of their preparation for the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, they’re not on TV too often. The sport they play remains too low-key to even nudge, forget capture, the imagination of the mainstream Indian sports fan. Dinesh & Co, in many ways, end up being recognised a lot more when they leave Indian shores. Incidentally though, they attract curious looks and glances even abroad on bowling greens that have existed for over a century and in countries which count lawn bowls among their most popular leisure sports. Dinesh and his teammates, after all, don’t fit the stereotype of a lawn bowler, anywhere in the world. It’s got as much to do with their demographic as it does with their background. Lawn bowls has for long looked for a face-lift in terms of breaking away from being the quintessentially elite “old man’s sport”. In Australia, there has been a drive to ease up on the dress-code – which traditionally demands all competitors to be decked in pristine white from top to bottom - by introducing barefoot bowling, which sees bowlers donning beach shorts. The average age of the Aussie team this time around is expected to be around 27, still 3-4 years older than that of the Indians. The Indians have, of course, unintentionally played a crucial role in this youthful transformation of lawn bowls. They have, in addition, also helped lawn bowls break the class barriers that have existed for so long, not just at home but internationally. For invariably, Dinesh & Co have ended up facing opponents not just double their age, but also those whose only idea of the hardships that the underprivileged class of Indians face is from what they witnessed in Slumdog Millionaire. The average India lawn bowler – and this includes almost every player in the CWG contingent Down Under presently – either comes from the tribal areas of Jharkhand or is someone who chanced upon the sport in some desperate circumstance — like Dinesh whose life was at a crossroads following the sudden demise of his football career. Unlike most of the competitors they share the bowling rink with during matches, the sport has ended up shaping and changing the lives of almost every Indian who has taken to the green. Sunil Bahadur, another key man in the squad at Gold Coast, went from sepoy to sub-inspector after winning an Asian medal last year. Back home in Ranchi, there are even more dramatic examples. Like one female bowler whose father used to sell combs and bindis on betel leaves off a cart and another male Asian medallist who no longer has to moonlight as a fast-food vendor selling plates of chicken chilly and chowmein. As Madhukant Pathak, chiefly responsible for helping lawn bowls shed its elitist tag in India, puts it, “In foreign lands, people of a certain age play lawn bowls because they can’t play another sport. In India, they play it because they cannot afford to play any other sport.” “FLIGHT RISKS,” exclaims Richard Gale. He then pauses and does it again. The Australian adds a little more. “Flight risks is the word they used for Indian players. They said they had insufficient bank savings. I felt really ashamed then,” he recalls. The former India national lawn bowls coach is talking about the time in 2010 when the Indian team was denied visas by the Australian High Commission for a trip to Sydney on the basis of their unimpressive financial background. Eventually, Gale had to drop plans for the month-long stint in Australia as preparation for the CWG that were to be held in India later that year. The visa snub aside, Gale and the other foreign coaches that India have had over the years have also had to contend with constant remarks, mostly of the condescending kind, over how a country like India could even have a lawn bowls team. “Can you teach me a Hindi dance?” one former coach was asked. Gale, though, recalls being unperturbed even if he would often spend from his own pocket to buy clothes for his players and also in case of emergencies. “Most of them came from very difficult backgrounds, and we were not only teaching them techniques but also basic etiquette like not urinating and spitting in the public,” he says now. It might sound harsh when he says that. But on the bowling greens anyway, “etiquette” happens to be as integral to the charm of lawn bowls as technique and skills. It doesn’t have any elitist connotation in this context though. Etiquette in lawn bowls, the archaic dress code apart, is more to do with basic courtesies. According to Pathak, it could include anything from the players themselves rolling and cleaning the greens, not placing the ball on the mat before rolling, and always ensuring to clean and hand your opponent’s ball to him or her once your turn is done. “The most important of the lot though is to lose gracefully. It’s a unique sport where it’s the loser who has to go to the winner first and appreciate his victory,” says Pathak, who reintroduced lawn bowls into the national consciousness in 2007 and competed himself at the international level. And etiquette enhancement was one of the key features that Pathak had singled out while planning for and getting the permission to fly the team to Gold Coast some two-and-a-half months prior to the CWG. It was also a chance for the likes of Dinesh to pick the brains of some of the best lawn bowlers in the world, who invariably come from Australia. This time, of course, there were no visa hassles. “I make sure they spend more time with the local bowlers than with us even if they only get to speak in their tooti-footi English. I want them to break out of their shell and widen their thought process. That’ll help them get comfortable in their own skin while competing and make them better players. Far too often, they end up being too shy and it affects their performance,” Pathak explains. “Considering most of the bowlers in these clubs are from an older generation, they end up taking a very parental interest in our players and it’s very helpful.” While his players are getting the exposure that their coach is adamant they require to compete at this level, he himself has been on a fact-finding mission and talks about being amazed at just the magnitude of the sport in Australia. He reveals how shocked he was to find 386 lawn bowlers registered in just one club during his team’s recent visit to the Gold Coast suburb of Rubina. “In all of India, we have only 125 players overall. There they have at least 3000 clubs across the country,” Pathak says. Not surprising, considering only Jharkhand and Assam have a professional set-up for the sport while other states like Punjab, Pathak adds, often send basketballers and even physical trainers to compete just so that their association stays afloat. LAWN BOWLS has a fascinating history. Widely popular since as far back as the 1200s, according to some reports, it was banned in the late 1800s by the English monarchy because of fears its rapidly rising popularity would overtake that of archery and other war-based sports. Perhaps its tag of a “lazy sport” comes from that prohibition era. Lawn bowls made a dramatic return into public consciousness and got massive help along the way since its loudest cheerleader was a certain WG Grace. The most famous beard in English sport had bowled underarm in cricket for his country. And in 1899, he decided to promote lawn bowls as the next big sport to fuel the flourishing rivalry between England and Australia because he is reported to have declared that tennis was a bit “effeminate” in that regard. Lawn bowls soon grew from being the next stage for the Ashes to becoming the most common exercise for socialising among the rich and the elderly. It then spread across the Commonwealth, and like with everything else, the Aussies just got better at it, and started winning a lot more than the original promoters of the sport. It remains one of the most recommended weekend pursuits Down Under. And as part of its makeover process, has also gained notoriety as an integral part of most stag parties, considering the proximity of the mat on the bowling ring — from where a bowler rolls the ball or bowl — to the bar. Lawn bowls remained a highly exclusive sport, confined to the Royal Calcutta Golf Club — the oldest golf course outside the British Isles — for its affluent members. And by the turn of the century, it had more or less fizzled out. Pathak, who was a cricket umpire at the domestic level and a liaison for match officials during international matches in Jamshedpur, first heard of lawn bowls from former Australia batsman Mark Waugh. Then in 2005, he flew to Melbourne on the eve of the Lawn Bowls World Cup, on his own accord, as a member of the newly-formed Jharkhand Bowling Association and spent 15 days there. He ended up bumping into the junior Waugh at the MCG. “I saw him there playing lawn bowls, and he told me about how it is great for fitness and improving concentration levels,” Pathak recalls. He returned home and to start with, set up two surfaces in his hometown of Ranchi, the city responsible for 95 per cent of medals India has won in lawn bowls. Lawn bowls made its India debut at the 2007 National Games in Guwahati but it’s Ranchi that’s been at the forefront ever since. Four of the six lawn bowl nationals have been held there, and the city plays home to the only residential academy in the country. Here players from anywhere in India are provided free accommodation, access to grounds and also bowls to play with. Even Ranchi’s favourite son drops in for a round or two, Pathak reveals. “MS Dhoni always visits on his way to the Deori temple. He plays for 10-15 minutes, and is really good at it too. He’s told me that once he retires, he’ll be spending a lot more time on the bowling greens,” he says. The sport, though, has somehow not quite broken through and is yet to spread to the bigger cities. Pathak, though, has used ingenious promotional strategies to spread the word across the board, regardless of age or gender. “It requires a lot of calculation as one of the necessary accessories is the measuring tape to see whose bowl is closest to the jack (the tennis ball-shaped target). It also improves focus, so I tell parents that it helps students with their academics. It’s a great exercise for pregnant women too, as the constant bending builds their abdominal muscles,” says Pathak. He also talks about it as a viable weight-loss programme or for those with a prominent paunch. “One game of lawn bowls can help you lose 1000 calories,” he says. The response, though, still comes in trickles with most Indians still rather sceptical of whether lawn bowls even counts as a sport. A medal or two at the CWG might help change that opinion for sure, and Pathak is confident too this time around. “Rather than focus on singles where Australia is indomitable, we will ensure our best players including Dinesh and Sunil play in the fours event. Aussie legend Stephen Glasson has put India behind New Zealand and England as favourites for a medal,” he says. Modern-day competitive bowling might be a serious affair, but it still can't beat the passionate tale about England's greatest military victory — the defeat of the Armada — in the16th century. The story goes that Sir Francis Drake was playing bowls when he heard that the Spanish fleet was approaching, but insisted that he still had time to finish the game. As it turned out, he lost the game but won the famous sea battle. Sometimes, even wars have to wait for a bowl game to finish. (With inputs from Sandip G) Beginner’s guide to lawn balls The basics: The premise is simple. Get the bowls as close to the white ball, also called jack. Players though vouch it’s not as easy as it sounds, for the bowls don't travel straight, as they are not exactly round and one side will be heavier than the other. The action unfolds on a flat square, with a shallow ditch at the end, that's 34-40m long, and divided into six playing zones called rinks. n The first bowler places the mat and rolls the jack to the other end of the green as a target. The jack must travel at least 23m and, when it comes to rest, it is moved across to the centre of the rink. The players then take turns to bowl. When all the bowls have been played, a competitor or team gets one point for each of their bowls that is closer to the jack than the opponent's closest bowl. After all the bowls have been delivered, the direction of play is reversed. Attempts: Each player has four bowls per end in singles and pairs competitions, three in triples, and two in fours. In a group event, that is doubles or triples, the skipper always bowls last. Scoring: The winner is usually the first player to reach 21 points, or the highest scorer after 18 or 21 ends. Another system used is “set play”. For example, the first to reach seven points is awarded a set, with the match played as best-of-five sets. The matches at the Commonwealth Games are best of three sets. If a third set is required, a tie-break is decided over three extra ends. This system is based on winning ends, not total number of points.
