BOWLING.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 6 January 1923, Page 3

BOWLING.

OBEY THE. RULES. (By "Rubber Bowl," in the Dominion). "Bowls is the only game I know in which cheating is openly allowed," said one well-known bowling authority who had been watching the tournament play on the Wellington Club's green on Tuesday. "If at cricket a bowler delivers a ball outside the wickets he is penalised at once by the umpire. If a bowler steps "right off the mat, either sideways ox in front, nothing is said about it, though the breach is just as serious." The rule is that a howler must have one foot on the mat. Indeed, it goes further. It says: "The player, at'the moment of delivery must have at least one foot on the mat, such foot to be not less than three inches from the front edge of the mat.". This means that anyone who stands on the front edge of the mat is infringing a rule ot the game, and h's bowl should not be allowed to count in the head, any more than a "no ball" at cricket counts. At cricket it means a run to the batting side, but in bowls it should be allowed to have a "four bowl" re_ioved from the screen.. There are players who step cle^n off the mnt and their bowls should be considered dead. It is the

-way to enforce a rule which so many bieak every time they play on the green. Tiie «^v;«enslanders gave a good lesson to local bowlers. Their rule —the proper one, of course, is two feet on the mat. That, after all, is what the mat is for. Every member of the visiting team played in that and no other way, which is a sufficient answer to those bowlers who believe that the step forward off the mat is too strong a habit to break down. But the infringement of the mat rule is not the only one commonly practised. Few bowlers seem to know that turning over a bowl to identify it is automatically burning that bowl, and any bowl so touched may be removed from the green. The rule rends: "If a bowl be interfered with or d:splaced other than by the effects of play, it is burned." There is no dodging ibis rule. How often are bowls accidentally kicked and then replaced as nearly as possible to where they where 9 Such bowls are "dead," and should be removed from the green. Here again our recent visitors were amazed at the freedom with which bowls were handled whilst lying in the head, and some 01 them remarked on the variatxm of tlie rules. As a matter of fact, there is variation, only in the observation ot the rules. This shows how far we are drifting from the strict game of' bowls. Still another breach of the laws of the game is that disconcerting habit of some players following the*r bowls up the green. This is a practice commonly objected to, yet no one objects strongly enough to check it altogether. A jrreat fetish is made of "stamped bowls,' 'but the writer considers that the matter of whether one bowl draws a few inches more than another is of small consideration, compared with the . observance of the rules of the game.