Keeping Score

Years ago, when keeping the scorecard for a team was the job of the second, it was quite possible for a relative novice to end up being responsible for noting scores, and that could be quite an uncomfortable experience, on top of trying to bowl properly. These days, with the skip assumed to be keeping the card as well as keeping the scoreboard right, it is clearly more likely to be an experienced player wielding the pen. (As we shall see, that doesn’t mean there are no errors!)

However, it is quite likely that a club member will be asked to mark a singles game. Last year I remember a District singles competition where there not enough markers and various spectators or supporters were roped in to keep the card, and needed to be told how to do it – not something to inspire confidence either for them or for the players. There are various official statements about the role and duties of the marker, dealing with things like keeping still, or limiting speech to factual statements rather than advice, but not a lot about the actual card. This post will look in a little detail at the mechanics of keeping the score – and the same points will apply whether it is in singles or part of a team performance.

Whatever shape the scorecard is, or whatever extra writing it has, the basic point is that all cards comprise two halves, one for each team/player, and each of these columns is sub-divided into two – the first showing shots scored on each end and the second giving the cumulative total. If you already feel insulted at this statement of the obvious, please bear with me and try to remember that the sight of such a card can reduce a new bowler to total panic.

When playing in a team it is quite easy to keep a check because there is another skip standing alongside, and the two skips also have to deal with the scoreboard. This doesn’t mean there are no slippages, but it does underline the importance of keeping in touch. Just last week I heard of an outlandish situation that occurred in a league match involving my previous club back in the UK. It was a game where three rinks each played 21 ends, with the overall result based on rinks and shots won. As it was getting dark, two rinks came to the end of their game, but the third had a dispute because one skip thought they had finished while the other said they had played only 19. How on earth that could happen, I don’t know. The fact that two other rinks had finished must suggest that unless there was some ridiculous slowness, the third should be finishing too. But on the night, much to the annoyance of those waiting to get home, it was decided to play two more ends. Viewing this from another continent, it seems highly likely that that rink in fact played two extra ends. Fortunately it affected neither the result on that rink nor the overall score, but one can imagine that had the shots margin swung in favour of the side wanting to play on, the atmoshpere would have changed!

So let’s turn to the more mundane issues of writing a single-digit number and then adding it to another number almost certainly less than 30… As noted earlier, this is not just a question of mathematical ability. Other things can happen to distract the card-keeper. I would certainly admit to having almost lost track of scores, both as a skip and as the marker in a singles game, and while the sense of panic that can ensue is not exactly up there in nightmare territory it does feel very awkward and embarrassing, and likely to leave you flustered. It isn’t good to be hastily calculating that “it must be an even number of ends because they are bowling in this direction” or trying to remember whether the score three ends ago was a one or a two.

The routine which seems safest is to note down immediately, and at the very least, the number of shots for the winning player/team. Because the score for the other side is by definition zero, that detail could – if necessary – be filled in later. But as long as the actual number of shots on each end is noted as a first step, the other three columns in each row can be calculated and inserted as soon as possible, if not there and then. For instance, you (as the marker) are at the head as the players eventually decide it is 3 shots to player A. You need now to get to the other end of the green ready for the next end. So note down 3 for A, and you can fill in the other parts of the row while the first bowl of the next end is being played. Nothing you do (card, scoreboard, putting away a measure) should hold up the players as they want to get on with the next end. they have their own rhythm, and the marker shouldn’t interfere with that.

These two cards were taken from a collection of old tournament cards at our club – filled in by unknown competitors from a variety of clubs. They are not unclear, and as cards go they are pretty good. But if you look closely you will see that one error was made on each. On the first one, the error was immediately seen and corrected: on the second end, a 2 was added to 1 to give… well, something other than 3, anyway. This was then overwritten in time for the other ends to be right. On the second card, the identical box (second end for the team on the left) has a more subtle error. You can see that a zero was recorded for a lost end, but this was then followed by a zero for the cumulative total, which of course should have been 3. Fortunately this error didn’t work its way down the card, as a six on the third end restored the total score to nine. But it could easily have become much more confusing, with debates between the skips about what the score should be, and you really don’t want that in the middle of a game.

When looking out examples of real cards to use in this post I came across several examples of cards where only the winning ends were recorded. Now it is possible that this is a widespread habit, but I have to say I have never come across it before. It so happens that the example below is about the neatest one of all the images given here, but I would still advise against it. My reason is that having only one line filled in removes an important crosscheck when comparing scores between themselves and with the scoreboard. It sounds like a recipe for the sort of confusion I mentioned at the start of the article, with someone “out” by two ends. Aiming for an empty line rather than the next line clearly has more chance of error. And it’s not enough to say that the chance of error is not very great – it doesn’t matter what the competition is, it’s the most important one in the world for the people playing!

You may also notice here that the card on the left had an error on the tenth end. I would imagine that this shows that the score was filled in some time after that end, because if it was done as soon as the score was decided the skip could hardly have confused three shots for his team (the corrected score) with one shot to the other team!

The card on the left also brings in the question of how to record zero scores on each end. There is no objective answer as to whether an actual zero (0) is better than a dash (-) to signify a lost end. But since this is a personal blog I’ll give my personal view that a zero is better, simply because there is just a chance that a dash could be read as a one (1) if it were tilted at all from the horizontal (I’ve seen it happen). You may argue that a zero could be mistaken for a 6 – fair point, but on the balance of probabilities I would still say a “0” is safer. Let’s say a player starts with four blank ends. When she does get on the board with a single, the difference between 0 and 1 is so very obvious, and much clearer than having yet another single pen-stroke. There is another small advantage of the zero. When you come to recording the (admittedy very rare) “no shot” end where neither side scores, it can be indicated by having dashes or even a solid line through the row to show that although no shots were scored the end does count; the difference from other ends, where only one side scored zero each time, will be very obvious.

Whatever you think of the individual bits of advice given here, just develop a routine and a rhythm for noting the scores, and (in a team game) checking them against the board and the other card (“Ten-six after 12?”). If you are marking singles, especially if you don’t know the players, it will help if you add words to their names (“red bowls”, etc). It’s also useful to keep the names on the scorecard in the same position as the names on the scoreboard. I admit that all this is marginal, but – just like bowls itself! – small margins can make a big difference.

Index

If I had a Hammer…

Since coming to Canada I’ve become much more familiar with curling, albeit as a TV spectator, and when explaining to people what bowls is all about (ok, the expression here is “lawn bowls”) I find myself referring in very loose terms to curling. After all, you are pushing a round object along the ground towards a target, right? Well, yes – but although a number of other elements are similar (we all refer to skips, and there can be a maximum of four players in a team) there are so many differences that it’s worth pointing them out. And I don’t just mean that there are no brushes on a bowling green…

You might think of it as the difference between tennis and squash. There’s a racket and a ball, and people talk about a service fault and so on, but after that everything is different. The two-handed backhand wouldn’t get you far in squash, whereas you needn’t worry about the squash ball flashing past you because you can retrieve it off the back wall. Tennis players can forget about trying to serve an ace in the squash court, and because the scoring systems are different your reaction to losing a point will be different too.

Bowls and curling have parallel differences. Let’s look at the main practical or tactical issues. And let me stress from the outset that I’m no authority on curling, having played just one game back in Scotland and otherwise being totally reliant on TV coverage. But certain things still stand out. For example, recent coverage of a championship final was preceded by a countdown of the 20 best shots in the history of the tournament. Out of those 20 shots, only one involved a gentle draw shot to avoid other stones and finish right on the button; the other 19 were all pretty firm shots that either took out another stone completely and/or used stones to deflect towards the target. They were brilliant shots, right enough, but anyone brought up on that would need to know that in bowls this approach won’t work. Sure, good players will be able to use other bowls in the head to get a glancing blow (a “kiss” or “edge”), but it’s not something to rely on as a standard shot. After all, the bowls are a lot smaller than a curling stone; there are a lot more bowls on the rink to complicate things; and the bowls are running on a curve, rather than almost straight, so that the margin of error is hugely increased. It’s also obvious that once a curling stone is hit it stays hit, sliding away across the ice rather than slowing with the resistance of grass. (I am in no way saying that curling is easier; it’s just very different). In bowls there is much more of an emphasis on avoiding other bowls rather than hitting them. So in any compendium of the greatest bowls shots, there would certainly be some take-out shots, and a couple of artful rubs (deflections), but a lot of “dead draw” shots to the jack (wherever it might be, including in the ditch).

These shots are so special that they could be classed as perfect, or terrific, or some such term, but there is no way that bowls could use the statistical methods of curling, whereby we can see that a certain player has a 92% accuracy record for the tournament, or is ranked 5th out of the 16 competitors. It appears that curling has a system where players can score from one to four points for shots that go up to perfect – with the possibility of a bonus for extra difficulty, scoring five out of four (sigh…). In bowls you just couldn’t do that. Certainly at county level in Scotland I saw selectors using a rather rough-and-ready system of scoring a point for being within a certain distance of the jack, and we would all agree that outstanding shots like Nick Brett’s famous draw through a forest of woods would be absolute perfection, but on a routine basis you just can’t operate that way (neither could he). This is where the target issue comes in. In bowls you are not so often aiming at another bowl, but looking to finish in a certain area. When skips shout “It’s not wasted there!” or “Good place” they are not thinking in terms of scores for the shot, simply that areas and possibilities are being covered.

If you have read a few other posts in this blog you’ll know that I like to look at bowls in the context of other sports. This post gives me a chance to bring in football (soccer) in relation to bowls and curling. A review of the recent encounter between two of Europe’s top sides (Manchester City and Real Madrid) brought up a distinction made by a major theorist of the sport, between what he calls Positionism and Relationism. Here, Positionism (based on rigid zonal systems) is exemplified by City, while Relationsim (managed spontaneity) is the mark of Real. Let me stress that we are not talking about superiority here – rather symbolically, the teams drew each of the two legs of their match and then could not be separated by extra time, with the outcome decided by a penalty shoot-out). But the stylistic difference was very noticeable. And I hope you can see where my argument is going now: curling (chess on ice, as it is sometimes called) is much more formulaic than bowls. And how can it be otherwise, when in bowls even the target (the jack) can move? There is no point thinking too far ahead when the jack might move many metres back (or even forward), or off to the side! Managed spontaneity sounds good to me.

A fascinating guide to tactics in curling tells us that there are four ways to score: the conversion, the steal, the force and the blank. That impressive list just highlights the difference with bowls, where you just score shots – ideally, more than your opponent. That’s a simplified view, of course, and players will adapt to the state of the game, but in essence you are scoring one or two or more, not worrying about what it is called. I suppose the nearest you come is in scoring or conceding a “count”, which is a loose term to mean possibly four, certainly five and definitely six. In other words, “a lot”! Oddly, and no doubt by coincidence, there is an overlap of terminology here: the circles on the ice are called the house, and when a bowler scores the maximum four shots in singles it is informally referred to as a full house.

The role of the lead, and early deliveries in each end, will also differ. I was struck in the recent World Championships to see that the advertisement breaks on TV regularly lasted until the third stone of the next end was coming down the ice. Nothing to see in the first two, then… Imagine being a lead who has played all those years to reach the pinnacle of the game and then have the family see only one of his two bowls on each end! Those early stones will be placed with a team strategy in mind, and throughout the end there will be the possibility of leaving a stone short as a “guard”. In bowls, this is not a tactic for early bowls – if anything, you’d want to finish just past the jack. But essentially you want your lead to be getting as close to the jack as possible, and applying pressure right from the start. Indeed, a really good opening bowl may stay as shot for the whole of the end. You can worry about placing back bowls or dropping protective bowls short a bit later in the end: above all the lead needs to be accurate.

A bowl that is within a metre of the jack, and in front, is ok for me as it can be used or promoted,but any further than that and it is probably just an irritating short bowl that prevents later players from having a decent line. There is certainly a place for a deliberate blocker, either right on the drawing line to frustrate an opponent, or dead centre to prevent or restrict a drive (running bowl), but these take some skill. Imagine you are playing someone you know isn’t good on the forehand. You would surely want to try bowling on the backhand, ideally a little short, to force the opponent on to their weaker hand. But the trouble with attempted blockers is that anything even slightly off position becomes a perfect sighter for the opposition, providing a handy guide for their next shot (Skip: “Play it to come just inside that front bowl…”)

Then there is the influence of the last bowl or stone. Elsewhere in this blog I’ve quoted the great bowler Tony Allcock to the effect that “having the jack may be an advantage; having the last bowl is always an advantage”. That is more and more true as you go up the skill ladder: I wouldn’t imagine that a novice would see much advantage in going last with at least 15 other bowls on the green. But the point remains. When, some years ago, the rules were changed to give the winner of an end the choice of who had the jack, it rapidly became clear that the best players would hand over the jack to their opponent and then be more likely to win the next end. So a natural balance had been disrupted, and after a few seasons we went back to the jack automatically going to the winner of an end.

This little experiment did show how important the last bowl can be, but it was as nothing compared to what appears (to the outsider) to be an obsession with having the last stone in curling (the hammer). By this, I simply mean that the advantage is so great that teams will forfeit the chance of scoring a shot with the last stone of an end in order to retain the hammer for the next one. In a game I saw last week this happened on just the third end, with the score 2-2. All that empty ice, and the chance of just finishing somewhere in the house for a shot, but… no thanks, I’ll gamble on getting more next time. This is inconceivable in bowls. The closest you will come to it is when a player has the last bowl, and the situation at the business end of the rink is that each side has one bowl touching the jack. The scores are so tight, and the risk of losing a shot so great, that the skip might well opt for a “no shot” decision, to keep things as they are. But that is not done in order to have the last bowl. It’s just to keep the advantage on the board while counting one more end.

I say this because I have so often been able to pick out curlers on a bowling green from their tactical approach, and have to say that in general the two approaches don’t mix well. I’d say that the greatest difference in tactics between the UK and Canada is the explicit encouragement of the back bowl by Canadian players. Putting an early back bowl in position while leaving the jack open for the opponent hits me with the same strangeness as having prices in shops increased by adding tax to the shelf price – but of course, you do get used to it, and the reason becomes clear when you see the greater tendency to play heavy bowls to disrupt the head and take the jack through to the back. Which takes us back rather neatly to the influence of curling…

Next Post Index

Index

This index is designed to allow readers to find particular items in a blog that has been written over a period of years. It is limited to bowls topics, and does not include, for example, names of people or places. For each topic the direct links concentrate on major references, and generally ignore any passing remarks in posts devoted to other topics. I have given some indications to context or special meanings, but generally try to limit references to one main post. I hope you don’t limit your reading in the same way!

About the blog

Advice for teammates. See also Information

Applause while playing

Backhand

Blockers

Chalking bowls: For opponents. Timing of the action

Choice of shot: By the skip. The “percentage shot“. Positional bowls. Tactical shots. See also Covering bowls, Decision-making

Controlled weight

Count (losing a c…). See also Curling

Covering bowls

Curling

Decision-making. See also Choice of Shot.

Deflections. See also Wicks

Delivery routine

Draw shot, with special reference to the Lead

Etiquette. Actions during play. General politeness

Forehand.

Handshakes

Head (visiting the head)

Information. Conveying info to teammates. Terms and expressions

Instructions (following)

Jack. Centering. Control of. Delivery. “Jack High” or “Jack Level”. Length of. Playing to avoid j. To spring or trail the j. See also Minimum length

Lead, the.

Luck

Mat. Changing position. Possession of. See also Practice

Measuring. For shot. Long tape (for measuring length of jack). Errors to avoid.

Minimum length.

Percentage shot

Politeness. See Etiquette, Handshakes

Possession of Rink.

Practice

Risk and Reward. See also Percentage shot

Scoreboard. Conventions. High scores. See also Scorecard.

Scorecard

Second, the.

Shots (scoring). Agreeing score. Avoiding ambiguity. Conceding (not claiming) shots

Skip

Team roles

Terminology

Third, the

Toss of Coin

Toucher. See Chalking bowls

Visiting the head

Wicks. Apologising when you benefit. Accepting when you don’t.

Wrest shot

“Yard on” shot.

Playing the Percentages

There is a maxim in bowls that good players will be very good at choosing the percentage shots. Indeed, one could say they are good because they are good at the percentage shots. It’s worth spending a minute or two unpacking the term for anyone who isn’t familiar with it. Perhaps it sounds unduly complicated or mathematical, but ir’s really not. It’s simply a question of choosing – in any given situation – the shot that will be most likely to produce a good result with the least likelihood of a mistake that gives shots away.

It would be silly to try to give a list of possibilities here. Not only is the range of scenarios impossibly big, but there are also all sorts of variations produced by the state of the game in terms of the score. So what might be an unduly risky shot in one situation could be the obvious choice in another. I guess players’ ability and confidence are factors too, but for present purposes I just want to concentrate on the decison-making process. And it really should be a process, not a snap decision, as this little story will illustrate.

This example happened yesterday (in May 2023). Our team was 15-10 up with two ends to go, and lying one or two shots before the opposition skip whacked the jack right to the edge of the ditch, with his own bowl going into the ditch and – by chance – a wayward back bowl some six feet across the rink making a second. I had one bowl left as I surveyed the scene. Now, because I’d been playing well all morning I really fancied my chances of running a backhand bowl at the jack and taking it into the ditch to get a shot. But fancying your chances isn’t the same as weighing up the chances. The required gap on the backhand was small, so that objectively the odds were really against, even for a much better player than me. A far safer option would have been to draw on the forehand, where the gap between two front bowls was bigger, allowing a pretty free draw to get to within six feet of the ditch and thus save one shot. The odds for that were surely at least 50-50. But excitement took over and I didn’t even consider that second option, which appeared obvious only after I’d gone for the “big one” and missed. That in turn meant the score wa now 15-12 instead of 15-11. With one end to go that could have been very costly. You, Dear Reader, would surely expect better from someone who claims to be offering advice. But I just want to illustrate how easy it is to get carried away, even after years of experience.

So the moral is that in any situation where you have options for a shot, you should be considering the ways that it will help you either win the end or minimise the number of shots you lose on that end. What are the chances there – be realistic. Have you played that kind of shot before? How many times would you get that in ten attempts, do you think? And what happens if the jack does move? Is it a 50-50 outcome, or likely to be worse? And what is the score on the board? This might sound terribly complicated and long, but it needn’t be, and with some practice and experience it won’t be.

Playing percentage bowls is not the same as safety-first policies, or unadventurous play. The best players I’ve played with have always been really good at seeing opportunities for getting a big score by being positive or even aggressive, while at the same time limiting the potential losses and being ready to rein in ambitions if the situation demands it. And nobody has ever talked about exact percentages – you won’t be required to say that the chances are 64% or anything like that. It’s why the term is usually “the percentage shot” – the one that overall is the most fitting. Do remember also that the aim of such a policy is to limit the downside, not necessarily to win every end. Thus, the best shot on offer might well be one that secured second shot, rather than losing rather more by trying to win the end at all costs.

It’s also important to remember the match situation at all times. The poorest choice of shot I ever saw, really, was in the final of a pairs competition where Team A were five shots down going into the last end. They also had the last bowl of the match, by which time they were either one up or one down – I forget, and it doesn’t matter. The point is, the lead of Team A called out to her skip to “draw in here” on the forehand. But what was that going to do for them? In percentage terms it had zero chance of altering the result; the skip might as well not have bowled the last bowl at all. The only option here (I would argue) was to hit the head hard with a running bowl and see what happened – a burned (replayed) end would at least have offered another chance. And even if such a “hit and hope” shot was realistically only 4% or 5% likely to achieve any good result, that was still better than zero.

By now you will probably have seen that this idea of the percentage shot is linked to the whole idea of risk and reward. And just as, in financial affairs, people are warned not to invest money they can’t afford to lose, so in bowls we should limit the chances of gifting shots to the opponent when we have had to work so hard to earn them.

Next Post Index

Back and Fore

This blog, as I mention in the index, isn’t a coaching manual. There are all sort of videos and guides out there which a beginner can access to find out about how to choose the line of aim, or the difference between the cradle and claw grips. But all that sort of advice (while very necessary) basically concerns things you can learn and practise on your own; this blog concentrates more on the sorts of things you will come across in competitive bowls at all levels, and so you’ll find very few posts which offer any real form of coaching. But this present post is something of an exception, in that it does resemble a coaching session on the differences between forehand and backhand. Don’t worry – it won’t be too technical, and I hope it won’t be too personal either.

The main idea here, and it is something which I always do stress enormously when coaching, is that there is fundamentally no difference between the forehand and the backhand. Most people who come to bowls have by that stage in their life come across these terms in relation to tennis or squash, and have a perception that the shots are very different. And of course, in those sports they are different, in set-up, arm action and (for the average player) power. Bowls is another story. The set-up for either shot is exactly the same, except that a right-hander’s feet are pointing very slightly right for the forehand, and very slightly left for the backhand. For left-handers, of course, it’s the reverse. But apart from that, the approach to finding your line, or keeping your arm in a straight line along the point of aim, is the same. Therefore, it stands to reason, there is no reason why one should favour one side over the other.

Actually, and in fairness, there might just be an issue for some people who have mobility problems, or who have some physical disability which makes balance awkward on one side. In such a case, we would all just be glad that you are playing, and adjust any advice accordingly. But apart from that, and assuming physical fitness, my point would hold true. You simply can’t rely on playing on one hand. It is just about conceivable that a lead could get away with playing the same hand all the time, but even here there could be problems, depending on either the state of the green or the skill of the opponent. What happens if one side of the green is bumpy or bare, or if there is a big swing on one side when you are playing with rather narrow bowls; and what happens when an opponent works out this one-sided approach and starts to block that hand deliberately?

If you play in other positions in the team it’s far worse, as there are obstacles all over the green and a skip who is asking you to play on a hand you don’t like. All that green, and you’ve decided to ignore half of it!

No, please take my word for it, and make a conscious effort to develop both hands, so that the only difference – the only difference – you notice when asked to play one side or the other is that your feet are pointing in the appropriate direction. On which point, here’s another tip. Always remember that the skip (who is standing at the other end) needs to know which side you are bowling, and that you are following any instructions. The position of your feet and the slight angle of your body are vital clues in reassuring the skip that you are going one side rather than the other.

So bowls doesn’t really have the issue of soccer players with a “favourite foot” or tennis players with a dominant forehand, etc. If we allow ourselves to be a little technical it is possible to argue that one might get more control on the backhand because the movement of the arm during delivery is closer to the centre line of the body. On the forehand the arm is marginally further from the body, and this can result in “hoiking” or pulling the bowl narrow, especially on heavy shots. Personally I notice greater accuracy on the backhand with any weighted shots, for this very reason. But this is not offered as a golden rule: it works better for me, in general, but that doesn’t allow for variations in the green or the state of play.

Being fluent in both forehand and backhand also helps you avoid the mistake of bowling “round the clock”, that is, using either of those hands on every end. If you think about it, that style of bowling means that in an 18-end match you’re bowling on each side of the rink nine times, having to learn and remember the state of the grass or the bend of the bowl on alternate ends. But if you are playing the same side of the rink all the time (the same side, not the same hand) you get a lot more experience of that strip of grass, be it straight or bendy. If there are trial ends in the match you may make up your mind very early indeed; if the match started “straight in” it may take a couple of ends more before you decide for sure. But once the decision is made, stick with it as much as you can, and only depart from it when you are forced or told to do so. Back and fore, back and fore…

Index Next Post

Know the Rules

Bowls, like other sports, is governed by a set of Laws, sometimes loosely referred to as Rules. But perhaps more than most sports it also has rules that are set by the organisers of competitions or leagues, and these can vary quite a lot. It’s always important to know the rules, both in the sense of the general laws of the game and of the specific rules within a club setting, and this post looks at some typical situations It may be worth distinguishing between the Rules (=Laws) and the rules (of competitions).

No one would expect a beginner to read carefully through all the Rules before starting to play. There has to be a certain amount of learning “on the job”. The trouble is, not all club members are expert in what can or can’t be done. For example, there is a perfectly good and sensible Law which says that a skip does not have to deliver the final bowl of an end if she doesn’t want to or is advised by teammates not to. But I remember once being told off for not bowling that last bowl because there was to be a measure for the shot. As it happened I was confident the measure would be in our favour. But it was my choice, as skip with the final bowl of the end, to take that judgement call: the fact that people wanted to measure it was immaterial.

There are also a lot of ordinary club members who are not sure what happens when two jacks are delivered illegally (we can use that word because we are talking about Laws!). As noted elsewhere, the jack then is placed on the T, but the person who is to bowl first can set the mat at any length. Or here’s another point which I have seen happen. A player bowls a very fast wood that hits the jack on to the bank, from where it rebounds on to the playing surface. Would that still count as being in play? (The answer, last time I looked, was yes.) So perhaps the advice here is to locate a copy of the most recent Laws, and to look up topics whenever you have been in a game where there was any kind of dispute, or something you didn’t understand. It’s not wise to believe the person who speaks loudest or who wins the argument on a particular day.

Generally, once these sorts of thing are learned they are valid everywhere until any formal revision. But the (lower-case) rules that govern individual competitions vary quite a lot, and you have to be sure each time that you understand them. I don’t mean they are complicated, simply that one has to be aware of the “terms and conditions” of a game. Generally, in a proper competition, there will be a printed version of the rules, or even one on the web, and in addition the organiser might well read out a summary before play begins. That, you might say, should make it clear. But it’s not always the case, as some examples might illustrate.

First, the actual system of scoring can subtly alter – this makes bowls, if not unique, then rather unusual in sporting terms. Some tournaments decide placings between teams that finish with equal points on shots difference (for-against); but sometimes it is done on the basis of shots scored. That can make quite a difference. One could argue for a long time about whether a team that had a score profile of 40-35 after three matches was better or worse than another team carding 38-9. But if the latter team had been thinking the competition favoured shots difference they might have been coasting at the end, instead of looking to maximise their score. Just recently I learned that a local league here in Vancouver uses a “percentage” system, which isn’t strictly percentages, but does produce mathematical-looking numbers by dividing shots for by shots against. This variant shows up the differences even more (though it has to be said that I’ve never come across a tournament using this last method).

Consider the following scenarios. Three teams, A-C, are tied on points, and the result is to be determined by shots. But which system? Is it to be shots difference (SD), highest total of shots scored (SS) or the so-called percentage system (%)?

	Shots for (= SS)	(against)	SD	%	SD	%	SS
A	60	31	29	1.9	3	3	1
B	50	18	32	2.7	1	2	2
C	45	15	30	3	2	1	3

We see here that teams with a very small difference in shots for and against can finish in very different positions in the ranking (and prize money!). Here columns 4 and 5 show the results produced by the shots difference and percentage systems, and the last three columns show how the teams would finish. You see that each of the three could win the competition depending on the system used.

Such competitions also usually refer to visits to the head. Generally games are timed for a certain number of minutes, and the rules are devised to stop time-wasting. It makes perfect sense, but typical things to know are whether it is just the skip who can visit the head, how often, and whether it has to be before the very last bowl or at some other time. In other words, if it is a pairs tournament with four bowls each, can the skip pay his one visit before his third or even second bowl? It’s easy to lose focus if there is any kind of dispute with opponents, and therefore doubly important to know beforehand what is allowed.

Another thing to be sure about is whether the re-spot rule applies in the event of an end being “burned”. The re-spot rule is one that has developed over recent years, borrowed from indoor competitions and especially televised matches. For many decades the rule (ok, Law) was that if a jack was moved outside the rink the end was dead (or “burned”), and had to be replayed. This was actually another example of needing to know the Laws, because they said that the end should be replayed in the same direction unless the skips agreed. Now of course, if 15 or 16 bowls had been bowled before the jack was shifted off-rink it meant that all those bowls would have to go back up the rink. Very often the skips would just agree to save effort and play the other way. But sometimes, perhaps to waste a bit of time, or perhaps because one team was finding it easier to play one way – or perhaps even just as a bit of gamesmanship to annoy the opponents – a skip would insist on going back up the rink and starting there. Don’t forget that skilful players could deliberately burn an end, so it might happen more than once on the same end. You can imagine that this didn’t appeal to programme schedulers on TV, and the re-spot rule was introduced.

Broadly speaking, this allows for the jack to be replaced at its normal length, as if it had never gone outside the rink. In indoor games it tends to be placed on a spot two metres to right or left of the original T mark, depending on which side it went out. Outdoors, with greater difficulty of marking spots, it is often placed on the T. And this can have serious results. Last year I was in a tournament where my partner and I were 2-4 down after four ends. We (or rather, he) then did very well on the next end, and by the time the skips came to bowl their final bowl we were lying four shots in a very compact head, . Standing at the head, I could see no way the jack was going back to where the other side had one loose bowl, and in view of the fact that the opposition skip had not done a lot so far I advised adding another shot. After all, that would make it 7-4 to us in a ten-end match. We duly went to a position of holding five, but then the opposition skip played a really heavy shot that hit the pack of bowls so hard that the jack went out at the side. I’d totally forgotten that the jack would then go back to the T, rather than replaying the end. And of course, they now had not only the back bowl but also another one that had dribbled up the green after the big impact I described. So we were now 2-6 down. That was a very careless error, and really cost us the match, which was eventually lost by one shot. Some might also say I was greedy – the subject of another post – but either way it was the worst mistake of the whole season. And yet another lesson learned.

Index Next Post

Where did we go wrong?

One of the dangers of a blog like this one is that there is a risk of sounding rather smug and a bit of a know-all when throwing out advice about how to perform under pressure or manage a game.  So, in the interests of fairness and honesty, I propose sharing with you a bad experience from last week.  In the card reproduced below my team is the one on the left.  That’s right, 7-21.

Horror Story

Before that game we were top of the league, but this match was against the team who were in second place.  They had a game in hand, too, so a win for us would have been really useful in stretching our two-point lead. As you can see, that win was never likely on the day.  So what went wrong, exactly?  Let’s look at the card and dredge up some painful memories.

The first end was not good for us.  The opposition front end rolled four bowls in really close, and it was as well for us that their excellent skip could only add one to the tally.  Of course, I tried to get in, but failed.  The draw was difficult, not least because of a couple of short bowls sticking out from the pack, and I seriously thought of having a run at the head, just to disrupt things.  But – rightly or wrongly – over recent years I’ve tried to stick to the draw shot on early ends, simply to ensure that I get that drawing weight fixed in my mind, and my arm. Playing heavy early on tends to disrupt your feel for the pace of the green.  So, should I have stuck with this standard safety-first approach or recognised that serious conditions required serious measures?  I’m not expecting you to come up with the answer, by the way, but just illustrating a typical dilemma for a skip.

Whatever, I guessed wrong, but in truth I wasn’t too worried.  As I joked with our lead as we crossed on the next end, “If you’re going to lose a five, do it on the first end, not the last!”  That is good advice in general, and we did in fact then get a two, the only time we scored more than a single.  I remember once watching a Scotland vs England match, and seeing the great Alex Marshall bowl two miserably short bowls on the first end of a fours match, to lose a six.  His rink then won the next two ends by three shots each end, so that after three ends they were level.  That example has always stayed with me, and I do think it’s useful to see even the loss of a six as merely two threes – manageable, even if not desirable.

As you can see from the card, the scores then bobbed along quite normally, and after eight ends the deficit was still exactly five. But equally it was starting to look as if we needed shots.  On the ninth end we were doing well until the opposing second put a shot in just to the left of the jack, on the (right-hander’s) backhand side.  I tried (and failed) twice to beat it, but for the final bowl gave in to frustration and played a clever shot up the forehand side, aiming to drift across through a gap and remove the shot bowl.

It almost worked!  Unfortunately, in my anxiety I pushed it too hard, and instead of direct contact my bowl skimmed the jack on the way through, sending the jack in the other direction, where the opponents had three bowls.  So what might have been one shot lost, and 5-11, suddenly became 5-13.  Silly!

Again we got just one shot in reply – you can just see how accurate and testing the opponents were, always ensuring that we were having to work hard even for a single shot.  And of course, when you are that accurate, what happens is that any movement of the jack often produces a few bonus shots.  That is what came about on end 12, where my last bowl needed to have a bit of pace to go around a short bowl, but finished hitting that bowl, which went forward and pushed the jack back to lose us four.

Even on the last end, with the result a foregone conclusion, we were lying four shots after dislodging the jack, but the opposing skip drew the shot with her last bowl to win the end.  It was a convincing and thoroughly deserved win.

Notice that I say “her” last bowl.  In fact, the team comprised three ladies, whereas our team had two men.  I stress this to point out to new bowlers that men and women can have really good games on a pretty equal basis at club level.  Indoors, it seems to me that women can capitalise better on their (general) reliance on the draw shot; errors of playing over-weight are magnified on the indoor carpet, and the best women can make male opponents look lumbering, rather like diminutive wingers in football dumping clumsy defenders on their backsides.

But whatever the general truth of such observations, the point today is that that game was won by greater accuracy throughout the team, together with some poor decision-making on my own part in terms of advice to others and especially what I did myself.  In truth, the result would likely have been the same even without those errors, as we were down on all the ends in question, but the margin, and the deflation of mood, needn’t have been as bad.

Thanks for helping me through what French speakers would call an “auto-critique”.  I hope it’s as helpful to you as it is to myself!

Index            Next Post

Don’t be Greedy

Perhaps I should remind readers that this loose series of comments and observations about bowls is not supposed to be coaching, or detailed instructions about the sport, but simply a few hints about getting the best results – both in terms of personal satisfaction and match scores.  Although the notes are tilted towards helping new – or newish – bowlers, we all know that the game can, on a bad day, reduce any of us to feeling like a beginner, so I like to think that any bowler could get some benefit, even if only in having their own ideas and experience confirmed.

This post starts with an indoor game I watched the other day.  Well, “watched” is overstating it, as I came into it on the penultimate end, and in truth that was just as well – the pace of play was so slow that I’d never have managed to watch the whole thing.  This pairs match managed just 11 ends in two hours, whereas at our club the normal duration would be 16 ends, and 15 minimum.  Oh my!  So I suppose the first point to make is: Come on, guys, get on with it!

However, to the main issue.  When I arrived at rinkside, ready to play my own game on this rink, the lead player of Team A was involved in a lengthy and tedious debate, giving his skip all sorts of advice and options for the last bowl of the end.  Team A were leading 7-5 on the board, and holding five shots on this end.  So they had a potential lead of seven with one end to go.

“Come in here!”, the lead finally shouted, with a flourishing gesture.  The skip duly followed the instruction with a fine backhand – the trouble was, it was too fine a backhand, connecting full-on with the jack and trailing it through to an opposition bowl, so that Team B were gifted a shot, which put them at 6-7 on the board rather than 5-12.  You’ve probably guessed already what then happened.  Team B won the last end by two shots, and took the match.

As we all know, in any sport, or perhaps in any either-or decision in life, hindsight is always 20/20; it’s easy to criticise when the outcome is known.  But in this case, the issue was simply one of game management.  The match had clearly been very tight (12 shots in total on the first nine ends). With a lead of seven on offer, there was no point in taking any risk at all.  Even advising the skip to not play the bowl, taking the five shots, would have made perfect sense.  This was a knock-out match, not one where shots difference might count later on, so why be greedy?

Obviously each situation is different.  Had there been no danger whatsoever, maybe with two or three yards of clear green to draw to a cluster of bowls, the call might have been justified.  But the very nature of the agonising and doubt suggested from the start that there were pitfalls waiting.  In that case, and in that situation, it wasn’t worth the risk.  In earlier posts I’ve mentioned the risk-reward calculation that underpins so much of the tactics in bowls. The game is hard enough without scoring any own goals!

And yet…  For all that I might criticise the decision in that game I would have to hold my hand up and admit that I have fallen for the same mistake of greed.  It was linked to an awareness of rules, and should perhaps be better dealt with in the relevant post.

Index            Next Post

Six Education

I was once struck by reading about an England cricketer (Andrew Strauss, I think, but it’s not vital) who was so intent on improving his game that he would write a diary about each innings and note things he could do, or should have done, better.  I realise that not everyone is that interested in improvement, but it remains true, in my view, that every single game of bowls will provide some kind of lesson for future situations. It so happens that a couple of recent matches have provided some good examples, and this post sets out to show what we can learn.  As you will see, the common factor is the scoring of six shots, but beyond that there isn’t much of a pattern.

The first occurred a few years ago in the final of a pairs competition – my appearance in the final, it should be said, was largely down to my partner.   We came through a tough qualifying group, conceding only seven shots in three games of eight ends, and then won the semi-final very easily.  After winning the first two ends of the final to go 3-0 ahead all looked to be plain sailing, until the opponents played a really good end to which we had no answer: being four down was not a cause for alarm until it became five and then, after the last bowl of the end, six.  3-6: uh oh!

It was at that point that the opposing lead sent the jack out at the side of the rink, turned to me and said “I do that a lot”. Having just lost a heap of shots on a full length I decided to move the mat up several yards, and felt relieved as he sent the first couple of bowls sailing past the jack.  For once I was able to put mine in the area (to tell the truth I’m not that happy myself on short ends indoors) and we won not only that end but all the others – naturally, all with the mat several yards up the green.

So the point which comes out of this, to reinforce something I wrote in a previous post, is the importance of being able to handle the jack – putting it pretty well where you or your skip want it to be, and certainly not handing it over to the opposition.  If my opponent last week had put up a testing jack and then put a bowl close it would have kept the pressure on – as it was, that six was the only score they got, and we won 17-6.  It was a costly mistake in more than sense, as the prize for the winners was £50 each!

Actually, in the semi-final there was another interesting six.  We were 4-0 ahead after three ends, and lying one shot.  I saw that the opposition bowl in second position was in fact the only one of theirs that was close, and advised Clive to come in a fraction over drawing weight with the possibility of turning that bowl out.  I told him it was worth five, but he did it so perfectly that his own bowl fell in for six.  That made it 10-0 after four ends of the eight, and basically that was that.  It’s always important to be on the lookout for such situations, but of course it needs an expert touch to be able to deliver it with the correct weight.

A few weeks later, in a league match our triples team started really well on the first end, four up as I went to bowl (as skip this time).  I put two more in, but then, as there were no practice ends, decided that it might be better to try the other hand, just to see how it was running.  I bowled long and failed to add to the six – and that almost came back to haunt me, as the opposing team played really, really well all afternoon, and came back so that with two ends remaining we were tied on 11-11, then we needed a measure on the last to ensure that we had won 13-11 rather than a 12-12 draw.

If you think I sounded a bit too pleased with myself in the account of the pairs tournament the moral here is clearly a story told against myself, as I had been too complacent on the first end, giving up the chance of a pretty regulation shot for seven in favour of a rather indulgent loose shot.  That was careless, and the lesson has been learned.

By total and remarkable coincidence, the day after the above incident we started another triples match and lost a six on the first end.  The end was disrupted by the late arrival of one of the opposing team, but let’s not make excuses – the point is, we lost a six. At this point, there were two model examples.  The first was the previous day’s experience of a comeback.  The second was the memory of an international match I once saw between Scotland and England, where the great Alex Marshall went to the mat as skip with his rink four down on the first end, and then bowled two short bowls to give England a six.  His body language was impenetrable, his reaction inscrutable – but his rink won the next two ends by three on each, so that after three ends it was all square with another 18 ends to go.  As people often say, if you are going to lose a count, do it early, and certainly on the first end rather than the last!

Yesterday was a case in point, as we clambered back, going from 2-8 to 14-8 in the space of  five ends, and even though we then lost four singles it was enough to get the win.  Again, my point in mentioning this is just to show that there’s no need to panic or get downhearted because of a bad start.  It’s rather helpful to think in terms of  the run-rate in cricket, working out a lead or deficit in relation to the number of ends left.  It’s really only when the deficit becomes greater than the number of ends remaining that you have a real problem.  In this sense, dropping an early six isn’t too much of an issue with 14 ends to go – and if you pretend that it was two threes instead of a six it sounds even less daunting.

Beyond the figure six these examples don’t have a lot in common.  One of them more or less clinched a win; another could have caused an upset but was spoiled by poor use of the jack; in other games one count of six on the first end did enough damage to spoil a team’s chance of a win, while another was overhauled by steady play throughout.  But putting them all together has hopefully provided some hints and practical examples of different aspects of the game, as mentioned in general terms elsewhere in the blog.

Index            Next Post

The Luck of the Draw?

Bowls, as many coaches rightly stress, is a drawing game.  That is, the great majority of winning shots and positions are earned by good, solid, dependable, skilful drawn shots.  What’s more, until you can get the steady draw fixed in your mind (and preferably also your arm) you can’t expect to play the heavier shots well, as they are all really variants of the basic draw. Generally speaking, the more weight you put into a shot the tighter (narrower) the line that you’ll need – but to calibrate that sort of change you need a mental reference to the baseline of the draw.

It’s a bit of a truism that bowls is a game of line and length.  That’s why golfers usually make good bowlers – they are used to reading the line of a putt and judging the correct weight, with the ball travelling along a line that isn’t always the shortest route to the hole.  A different kind of bowler (the cricketing type) will also be told to concentrate on getting line and length right.  Our own sport of bowls very definitely relies on these two L’s.

It does also involve a third L, however – luck!   All sports have some element of luck, whether it’s the bounce of the ball in rugby or the golfer’s errant tee shot which rebounds on to the fairway from a tree.  In bowls, as in all true sports, the skill factor far outweighs the luck element, but there are still times when you can benefit or suffer from unlikely events.

The most obvious case is when someone plays a heavy shot which is going well wide of the target until it hits a bowl that is nowhere near the head and is deflected in to get the shot. It happened to our team recently, on the second end of a match against really good opponents, and one in which victory would win us the league.  We were lying shot with a perfect bowl right behind the jack.  The opposing skip had the last bowl of the end, and sent a runner a yard wide – but it wicked off a side bowl, cannoned into the head to remove our shot bowl and ended up sitting there as one of three scoring shots   As a footnote, we lost the match by two…

Now, when this happens, there are several ways of dealing with it.  The first is to express annoyance, either verbally or with a pronounced shake of the head or rolling of eyes.  A second way is to keep quiet or mutter to yourself and carry on thinking about it.  Neither of these methods will do you any good.   I know this because I spent years wasting my time on them, especially the second.

It’s better by far to accept it (“It’s not how, it’s how many”) and remind yourself of how often you’ve benefited that way yourself.   It’s also broadly true that such things even out over time, although you can’t always expect it to average out over a short period like one match.

As I mentioned in a post on etiquette, the thing to avoid at all costs is applauding when a lucky shot comes off, or when an opponent promotes one of your own bowls to be the shot when you didn’t really deserve it.

The other thing to bear in mind, though, is that while a wild “wick” is generally seen as a fluke, earning at most some embarrassed laughter, there is scope for deliberate wicks, rubs or edges (depending on your choice of word).  Indeed, the better a player you are, the more you will use or expect these deliberate shots – played rather as snooker players will use angles to play an “in-off”.

Sometimes a back-end player will play a bowl that is slightly heavy but which is calculated to shake things up a bit.  If the bowls are sitting right, he may miss the ideal target but still get a result with Plan B (if it turns out to be Plan G we can safely say that it was indeed a fluke).   But it’s important to learn when shots are genuine attempts to finish “in the area” as opposed to being lucky ricochets.

Indeed, if the bowls are set up in a promising position there’s nothing at all wrong with looking to slide off them, or deliberately give a bowl a glancing touch to finish up where you want.  After all, no one criticises footballers for a glancing header, or suggests they should have met it full on.   No, this is a part of the game to be developed, and if anyone sounds scornful about such an intended glide, played at just over the drawing weight, all they’re doing is revealing their own lack of knowledge.

This is the sort of shot where your skip might be pointing to a bowl and saying “You can use this bowl”.  Even if you don’t get the clever edge, a full-on contact will likely push it forward, so you have every chance of a result.  This type of promotion is a perfectly valid tactic – your skip may well be pointing to two bowls in front of the head and advising you that they are both “yours” (in other words, don’t be afraid of hitting them on the draw).  New bowlers sometimes see their own short bowl and decide to change hand; on the contrary, you should really be looking to follow the same line with just a bit more weight, and you either then pass the obstacle or push it further in.  This is something else you can practise, especially as you know that if you can hit your previous bowl you have a very consistent line.  But again, do remember that while this sort of shot can earn applause, you need to keep quiet if the opponents do it for you by mistake.  Losing a match would be one thing; you don’t want to lose friends as well!

Index              Next Post