Bowls is Not the Same as Bowling
The Names Sound the Same, but the Sports are Very Different
Nov 3, 2009
Mention bowling to an American (for example) and to a Brit (for another example) and you are likely to excite two very different impressions in their minds. Bowling is either a game played in an ultra-modern bowling alley, with bowling balls being hurled towards ten unsuspecting (although they must be getting used to it by now) pins, with all the noise and excitement that this entails, or it is a gentle game played on a perfect piece of lawn, with people of possibly advanced age walking up and down, calculating angles and speeds, and being very polite to each other.
Both games have their plusses and minuses, and both are very enjoyable to play, but it is important not to confuse one with the other. It is probably best to adopt the convention of referring to the alley game as “bowling” and the lawn game as “bowls”. As to which is superior to the other, that is a question that is probably best not to ask, for fear of bringing the wrath of several nations, not to mention a whole generation, upon one’s head.
Before explaining how bowls requires a wholly different set of skills to bowling, here is a small diversion into the world of skittles:
A Brief Look at the Game of Skittles
Skittles, not bowls, is the game from which bowling developed. This is an ancient game, there being evidence that a variety of it was played in ancient Egypt. Today it is played mostly in the English shire counties and in Germany, although there are pockets of skittle playing in other parts of the world.
In England, many older pubs have a skittle alley, and a skittles match is a great social occasion, especially if there is plenty of real ale and a pub meal on offer. Many of these alleys are hundreds of years old, as the game has been played by many generations of villagers.
At heart, the game consists of rolling a “cheese” down the alley and aiming to knock down nine wooden skittles. The cheese is a shaped piece of wood that is not a ball in that it is round in only one dimension. The exact shape and size of the cheese varies in different parts of the country, and there are many other regional variants in the set-up and the rules.
However, the connection between skittles and ten-pin is not difficult to see.
The Game of Bowls (or “Lawn Bowls”)
The game played on a bowling green is closer in nature to boules, bocce or petanque than to ten-pin bowling, in that the object is not to knock anything down but to propel a bowl from the hand so that it ends up as close as possible to a target ball known as a jack.
Bowls is often called “lawn bowls” to distinguishing it from all forms of alley bowling, but this is also a misleading term as the game is played throughout the year in indoor arenas on artificial surfaces, and there are versions that can be played on smaller mats on any convenient flat surface, indoors or out. To confuse matters still further, there is flat green bowling and crown green bowling, but the brief description that follows concerns the flat green version.
The basic idea is that the bowl is not a perfect sphere but has a “bias” that makes it run in a curve, except when propelled at speed. The bias is such that, as the bowl slows down, the curve becomes more pronounced. The bowler must therefore send the bowl in the correct direction and at the right speed to achieve the objective.
The object ball, or the jack, is the first to be sent down the rink, and it can therefore end up at a greater or lesser distance from the bowlers. This therefore affects the tactics and the method of delivery.
The bowls, once they have come to rest, stay in place and become part of the dilemma that later bowlers have to solve. Bowls can be knocked by other bowls, as can the jack, and the game is all about trying to get as many as possible of the bowls belonging to your team closer to the jack than the closest of the opposition’s bowls. The aim can therefore be to knock a bowl towards the jack, or to knock the jack towards, or away from, a bowl. Given that the bowler can be thirty or more yards away from the “head”, and that success or failure can depend on accuracy to within an inch or less, there is considerable skill in getting it right more often than not.
There are a host of different situations that can arise and that can call for different tactics to be employed. Indeed, no two “ends” of bowls are ever the same, which is what makes the game so fascinating. The rules of bowls are very easy to learn, but to get really good at the game takes a lot of practice.
So, Which is Better, Bowling or Bowls?
The usual opinion of people who have played and enjoyed both games is that bowls is more challenging, and therefore more satisfying when the challenge is met.
There are so many factors that can determine success or failure at bowls, and which must be taken into account. No two greens are alike, some being naturally fast and others slow. Some greens have imperfections that can affect how the bowls run. The weather can make a huge difference, as can how recently the grass has been cut.
One could say that the two games are like chalk and cheese, but "cheese" has already been mentioned in this article. As it happens, chalk has a role to play in bowls too, but an explanation of that must await another article.
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