RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32214, 5 February 1970, Page 17

RANDOM REMINDER

TARGET

One more echo of the successful New Zealand bowls tournament in Christchurch For those not versed in the finer points of the game, watching a couple of rinks battling it out for a few hours can be confusing, partly because of the need for communication between a skip, or captain, and final player, at one end of the green, and his trembling teammates, three of them, at the other. Whil» the first three

players are delivering their bowls, they are under the instruction of the skip, who may have various and many ways of making his needs known. Some of them merely call out improbable instructions like up a yard or give her more green: others indicate the course they wish the next bowl to follow by a graceful bow and an equally graceful movement in which the yellow cleaning rags they always carry are trailed along the planned line.

This, were it not for the strong Kiwi accents, would offer a hint of Elizabethan courtiers. But there was an impasse during one of the championship rinks matches. The skip indicated where he wanted the next bowl by indicating to his team-mate that the bowl should be aimed at his (the skip’s) foot. The player, bending to deliver, straightened up and said “Which end?” The skip is a policeman.