Watch the Grass an Opposing Lawn Bowler Takes in the First Two Ends

 

In Canada, whether in open tournaments or club rollups, there are no practice ends. Consequently, at the start of play, lead bowlers have no evidence upon which to assess the correct grass for their first deliveries in the first two ends. Even so, more often than not, I see the lead given the advantage of playing the second bowl, paying no attention to the line taken by that opponent who is required to play first. Sitting on the bench, chit-chatting with other bowlers, arranging the bowls in neat lines, polishing bowls, or wetting a bowl’s cloth; all of these are more frequently witnessed than a lead who conscientiously stands a few meters behind the bowler on the mat and carefully notes that opponent’s aim line and that bowl’s finishing position, to learn from it.

Yes— different makes of bowls have different biases, but no rule forbids one from learning the model and the manufacturer of your opponent’s bowls. If this can not be interpreted at your stage of experience, your skip can tell you whether the player whose position opposes yours has wider or narrower bowls than yours. Furthermore, on slow greens, like we too often encounter in Canada, the aim line will not vary a whole lot among makes. 

With proper attention, the lead, who bowls second, should more often than not, outperform with the first bowl in either of the first or second ends!  

A Bold Lawn Bowling Strategy

A sports strategy is a plan that can be made before a sports competition begins. It is not determined by the fine details of a particular match situation. This latter is the business of tactics.

I propose that a team ( let us consider a pairs team ) decide that when it has possession of the mat during a match, it will place the mat at the closer hog line and deliver a jack that gets centred on the forward T. 

The end is played tactically from that point on. If the end is won, the same strategy is repeated in the next end. If the end is lost, the side attempts to recover the mat and restart its strategy. The strategy tries to force the opponents to play a game with a fixed minimum jack length and a dead bowl line 2 meters behind the jack.

The idea upon which the strategy is based is that there will be an advantage in playing a game the details of which your side has practiced much more than the opposition and which has some features distinctly different from the standard bowls contest.

To be successful in the execution, the lead must be accomplished at rolling the jack reproducibly 21-23 meters. This seems like a tall order, but it is a precise challenge that can be practiced by borrowing a box of 16 jacks from the clubhouse.

Why should this strategy work?

 

In Canada, the minimum jack length is 21 meters; in most other countries, the minimum distance is 23 meters. First, few other teams practice bowling either 21 or 23-meter ends from a mat at the hog line.

According to bowls.co.uk, “At the beginning of the first end, the mat is placed lengthwise on the centre line of the rink, the back edge to be four feet from the ditch.” I can find no official evidence for this purported rule. There is no such requirement in the Laws of Sport of Bowls, Crystal Mark 4. Consequently, this is no longer required. The lead in the first end can place the mat anywhere from T to the closest hog line. The strategy proposed can be applied from end 1, so if the toss is won, you can take the mat and move it forward!

What is so different about playing this short game?

The re-spot position is identical to the initial spot for the jack. Putting the jack cleanly out of bounds will get it returned to the position from which it came!

Knocking the jack out of bounds is extremely unlikely; unless given a sharply glancing blow, the jack will end up live in the ditch. 

The team using this strategy should have learned to deliver the more accurate running bowl (since this is a more accurate delivery than a drive, with the best chance of ditching the jack), and this shot also provides the best chance to drive an opposing shot bowl into the ditch, where it will be dead. 

If the jack makes it to the ditch, the area available for the opposition to draw their own shot bowl is only half as big as usual. This is because the available area is only a semicircle around the jack. When the jack is in the ditch, placing a shot bowl behind the jack is not available.

 It is almost guaranteed that some deliveries will finish in the ditch as dead bowls. If the opposition does manage to deliver the shot bowl, your side has available the running shot to cancel it.

The probability of a rebounding bowl is much greater, and a rebounding toucher is live: 17.2.3.

The probability of a jack rebounding onto the rink is much higher, and a rebounding jack is live: 21.1.

Many more dispositions of bowls near the jack will constitute a target for a running shot because the depth of the head can be no more than 2 meters, so the gaps between bowls, or between a bowl and the jack, will be effectively smaller. A running shot is more likely to hit something.

Paul Foster bowls all his deliveries with the form required to deliver a runner; no backswing and a big forward step. In a famous open singles match, he came from behind in the last two ends by moving the mat up to the hog line and delivering a minimum length jack. You can see this starting at about the 1:17:02 mark in the online video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VEGkkHgZ6o

Rule About Standing in the Head

A question arose during a club match. Where could the skip of the team not in possession of the rink stand? There was no disagreement that such skip should be required to move if so requested by the bowler on the mat. Rule 13.4 forbids the players in possession of the rink from being interfered with, annoyed, or distracted in any way by their opponents. The question was whether the person directing the head and whose side was in possession of the mat could require the opposing directing person to move entirely away from the side of the rink where the planned bowl was going to be delivered even in the absence of a request from the person on the mat. Is that skip’s personal feeling of annoyance, interference, or distraction encompassed by this rule? On that precise point it would probably take an actual umpire to decide! 

But what is indisputable is that a skip, that is not controlling play, because he/she is not in possession of the rink, must be behind the jack. This is established in rule  12.1.2.1.

12.1.2.1  Players at the head-end of the rink and who are not controlling play must stand: behind the jack and away from the head if they are members of the team which is not in possession of the rink.

There might be a question of what ‘behind the jack’ means. Rule 12.1.3 assists in assigning a meaning by specifying what ‘behind the jack’ does not mean: it is not “either level with or in front of the jack.” 

• 12.1.3  As soon as a bowl is delivered, a player who is controlling play from a position that is either level with or in front of the jack, must take their position as described in law 12.1.2.1. 

So behind the jack does not mean directly behind ( as in parallel with the centre line). It means beyond the jack and closer to the front ditch than the jack.

The next point at issue is what precisely “away from the head” means.

Since the definition of ‘head’ in the Laws of Bowls Mark 4 Edition is “the jack and any bowls which have come to rest within the boundaries of the rink of play and are not dead” it seems likely that all portions of the rink (i) short of whichever live bowl rests closest to the front ditch and (ii) between the left-most and right-most live bowls, would be part of the head. 

Thus, the person who is currently directing play could require that all members of the opposing team be outside of, and not obscuring, any part of this defined ‘head.’  Thus it becomes an act of generosity and sportsmanship if that person allows any opponent, including the opponent who in turn directs the head, to stand immediately behind him/ her and inside the head!

So the skip ( or designated directing player) not in possession of the mat should follow any requests of the opposing skip. Otherwise, the Laws of the Sport of Bowls, strictly interpreted, could move him/her much further away! 

Helping a Teammate without saying a Word

I think it is bad form to offer another player advice during a roll-up game of bowls. But sometimes it is possible to improve a person’s performance without saying a word.

Recently, I was skipping in a game of drawn triples. I had no knowledge about my other team members. In fact, I hadn’t ever met them. In the first end, I signalled my lead to deliver forehand and he brought his hand across his body in the follow through and the bowl almost left the rink after it cut across the centre line. This was repeated twice more, even though I was giving him grass with an allowance for this difficulty.

I never signalled for another forehand the whole rest of the match— always backhand, no matter what the situation in the head. Intuitively, people do not bring their arm across when bowling backhand. His weight was good, and he made a significant contribution in the remainder of the game!

Only afterwards did I tell him what he needed to fix on his forehand.

Take the Full 30 Seconds

 

I was bowling in one of the district playdowns last week in Toronto, and sitting at the table next to me in the clubhouse, a coach from the Canadian National Bowls team was telling some competitors whom she was coaching to visualize the path of their contemplated delivery and not to deliver the bowl until this was clear in their minds.

This got me thinking: could a person improve performance simply by taking 25-30 seconds to prepare for each delivery?

 This would provide sufficient time for multiple visualizations that would move one’s gaze back and forth between a stare point (say at 3-5 meters in front of the mat) and the jack.

Doing this as part of a delivery routine would very likely dramatically improve proper concentration, and that would provide benefits to all the players with less than perfect discipline.

Another Reason to Move the Mat

 

James Gardens Lawn Bowling Club has an outdoor sand-filled carpet. This is the second season of play since its installation and much of the fine whitish sand has worked its way into the carpet fibers as they are supposed to; however, most bowlers release their bowls slightly above the carpet surface and this leaves a series of dots where the bowl has bounced ever so slightly. This is caused by the re-emergence of sand where the bowl hits. The result is that one can see clearly the track of a prior bowl.

A first bowler who finds a good line gives away that line to the opposing bowler who bowls next. Furthermore, subsequent bowlers are gifted with increasingly well-marked paths on both forehand and backhand.

The remedy is to move the mat so that these paths no longer apply.

Only a small forward or backward change will do the job while leaving plenty of marks from the previous bowling to obscure the correct line.

Why Whether the Opponent’s Bowl is Above or Behind the Jack Matters

 

Observing from the mat, a bowler often cannot be sure whether an opposition bowl that has finished to the side of the jack is partially in front of the jack or is distinctly behind it.  You will often hear top bowlers asking the marker about this.

Why is it important? The questioner wants to know whether his bowl, if it finishes resting squarely against that opposing bowl, will be the closer of the two. If the opposition bowl is partially short of the jack, it will be better so long as it isn’t pushed back. If the target bowl is behind jack level and the delivered bowl comes to rest against it (or moves it further back) the delivered bowl will be closer.

So if the marker responds that the opponent’s bowl is short of the jack, the questioner is more likely to bowl the other hand. If the competitor’s bowl is reported to be behind the jack, bowling on the same hand as where the opposing bowl rests has advantages, mutatis mutandis.

Notice that this is one situation where being a tiny bit short of jack-high is better than finishing behind the jack!

Lawn Bowling Tactics: Removing Opponent’s Best Bowl

 

At Valverde LBC the other day, I was watching a pairs match and a tactical situation arose where repeatedly the skip bowler of an experienced team played what seemed a lower probability shot when something significantly better was available. 

The side that missed the opportunities was lying one; they had a bowl close up to the jack- within a few centimeters. The opponents held the second shot about a bowl in front of the jack but about 12 inches to the right.  What made the situation special was that the side holding shot also had the 3rd and 4th best bowls located about 18 and 24 inches behind the jack and 18 and 24 inches to the left.

There were other shorter bowls blocking approaches down the center of the rink. 

The skip of the side holding shot delivered two bowls down the right side trying to add a second shot. There was a path to the jack but in my opinion, both bowls should have been delivered down the left side trying to push out the opponent’s best bowl because if it were removed they would have scored 3 or 4 depending upon whether the delivered bowl remained in the count. The path leading to the opponent’s best bowl was equally open.

Other good outcomes that would have been possible coming from the left side would be a jack trail back to those waiting 3rd and 4th catchers on the right and a dead draw to the jack. 

The only negative would have been to knock the opposing bowl in for shot but considering how close the shot bowl was to the jack, this would have been unlikely. 

The lesson: Even if your side already holds shot, consider the contribution to the score if the opponent’s best bowl gets removed.