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Asian Para Games: Lawn bowls, seemingly simple game that requires deep focus
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Keep it steady: Malaysia’s Salmiah Binti Zakaria (front right) bowls in the women’s singles lawn bowl qualifying round in a match against South Korea’s Gyeongsuk Lee during the 2018 Asian Para Games at Gelora Bung Karno sports complex in Jakarta on Sunday. (INAPGOC/Husni Yamin )
L
awn bowls is a challenging sport in which players attempt to roll an asymmetrical ball, called a bowl, as close as possible to a smaller ball called a jack, located a minimum of 23 meters from the players.
The sport, little known in Indonesia, was first played in England during the 13th century. It was first introduced to a para athletics tournament at the 1984 Summer Paralympics for athletes with cerebral palsy or vision impairments.
While it may seem similar to bowling, lawn bowls requires greater stamina as it is an outdoor sport that typically lasts around two hours. Accurately rolling the bowl requires special techniques and deep
concentration.
Should the bowl, which weighs around 1 kilogram, roll farther than the jack, the player will get no points.
On Monday, lawn bowls players competed under the scorching sun at the hockey field at Gelora Bung Karno (GBK) Stadium in Senayan, Central Jakarta, during the 2018 Asian Para Games.
Athletes competed in two categories, those with vision impairments and those with physical impairments, including wheelchair users.
Indonesian lawn bowls player Kacung, 30, who has a vision impairment, said he loved playing the sport as it was similar to bowling, but more challenging, both mentally and physically.
“Accuracy is the key to the sport. We have to adjust our power while rolling the bowl. We can’t use too much power or too little. We also have to calculate the direction of the bowl,” Kacung said after the competition on Monday.
The former bowling athlete, who trained for a year ahead of the Asian Para Games, said the greatest challenge of the sport was mastering one’s concentration.
Kacung succeeded in beating Malaysia’s Masnah, 21-5, on Monday afternoon.
Japanese athlete, Hisao Kojima, 66, a wheelchair user, said he had played lawn bowls for the past 30 years. Kojima decided to focus on the sport because compared to other sports, such as basketball, playing lawn bowls did not require heavy physical exercise.
“Lawn bowls is also more comfortable for wheelchair users, compared to other sports,” Kojima said.
He added that the game was also inclusive because it used the same the rules for all people, including people with disabilities.
Kojima, who won a bronze medal at the 2014 Asian Para Games in Incheon, South Korea, said he was happy he could play lawn bowls at the 2018 Asian Para Games, given the sport was still not popular in Indonesia.
In Japan, the sport was also not very popular because of a lack of lawn bowls facilities, he added.
Kojima, who competed in Jakarta for the first time, said the hockey field used for the competition had a hard surface. Usually, good lawn bowls fields had a softer surface, he added.
The heat in Jakarta was another challenge for the players, with Kojima saying he needed to drink a lot to prevent becoming dehydrated.
Islahuzzaman Nur Yadin, the Indonesian lawn bowls coach, said the greatest challenge of mastering lawn bowls was to bear the heat.
“The players’ concentration will be affected by the heat. Therefore, they have to be calm. If they can’t control their mind and emotions, they will not be able to roll the bowl perfectly,” he said.
Introduction
Lawn bowls is a low impact, precision sport where people with disabilities can participate equally with able-bodied competitors. There are no changes to the standard competition rules of bowls. The game involves rolling radially asymmetrical balls (lawn bowls) toward a smaller white ball called the jack.
The game originated in the United Kingdom in the 13th century. The oldest existing bowling green is Southampton Old Bowling Green, which opened in 1299.
Lawn bowls for cerebral palsied and visually impaired athletes was introduced at the 1984 Paralympic Games and was dropped in 2000.
Lawn bowls for people with disabilities was played at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games and its inclusion helped the sport go mainstream, which resulted in the integration of able-bodied sports
organizations.
How to play
Lawn bowls is played on rectangular and manicured grass or a synthetic surface known as a bowling green, which is divided into parallel playing strips called rinks.
The aim of the game is to get one or more of your team’s bowls closer to the jack than your opponent’s.
The game starts with a coin toss and the winner lays the mat and rolls the jack to the other end of the green to serve as a target. Once it has come to a stop, the jack is aligned in the centre of the rink and players take turns to roll their bowls from the mat towards the jack to build up the head (the cluster of bowls around the jack).
Bowls may curve outside the boundary of the rink, but must come to a stop within the boundary to remain in play. Bowls falling into the ditch (at the end of the green) are dead and removed from play — except when one has made a connection with the jack (known as a toucher). Touchers are marked with chalk and remain in play even if they fall into the ditch.
Similarly, if the jack falls into the ditch it remains alive (unless it is over the side boundary), resulting in a dead end, which is either replayed or replaced on a designated spot — depending on the rules of the competition. Once each competitor delivers his bowls (two, three or four depending on the competition), the distance from the jack to the closest bowl(s) is determined, and one point (shots) is awarded for each competitor’s bowl that is closer than the opponent’s closest bowl to the jack. For example, where a competitor has three bowls closer to the jack than their opponent’s, they are awarded three shots. The exercise is then repeated at the next end, across a designated number of ends.
Games can be singles (one player per team), pairs (two players per team), triples (three players per team) or fours (four players per team). At the Glasgow Games there were two events — open triples B6/B7/B8 for bowlers with physical disabilities and mixed pairs B2/B3 for bowlers with visual impairments. In the mixed pairs, each bowler has a director who advises the player of the jack’s location in relation to the mat, and the bowls in relation to the jack. As a result, there are four players from each team on the green during the mixed pairs.
Classification
Each lawn bowls player is classified based on their disability. Athletes who are visually impaired must take a vision test. Those with a physical impairment undergo bench and functional skills tests. A bowler must lose at least 10 points in testing to be eligible for classification. There are eight sections within the lawn bowls classification system and specific requirements are applied to the type of wheelchairs that athletes can use. B1 to B4 are classes of bowlers who are visually impaired. B5 to B8 are for bowlers with cerebral palsy.
Who can play
To be eligible to play individuals must be visually impaired or have a physical disability that affects movement, usually due to birth defects, disease, surgery or injury.
