“Modernist” Defines The Happy Bowler

Northern Advocate, 1 December 1937, Page 2

“Modernist ” Defines The Happy Bowler

TN HAPPY MOMENTS DAY BY DAY, X A BOWLER S LIFE WILL PASS, IF CLEAN HE GETS THE BOWL AWAY; IS NEVER SHORT TO BLOCK THE WAY AND ALWAYS TAKES THE GRASS. Here are indicated the three main- qualifications of a good and happy bov/ler. And a bowler, like anyone else, must be good if he is to be truly happy. Failure in some form or other, is at the root of most miseij. The bowl then must be despatched on its way with a clean and smooth delivery. This is the first essential. Get that, and you have half the battle won.

Thrice is ho armed who hath his quarrel just, * But four times he who gets his blow in first. This may not have much to do with bowls, but it serves it emphasise the value of a good beginning, for a badly delivered bowl is hardly likely to realise its owner’s intention. - ‘ Whatever follows, therefore, must to some extent be in the nature of the unexpected, which, as we are told, is what usually happens in life, and certainly very often happens in bowls.

A Pitiful Sight. The bowl must leave the hand and meet the grass simultaneously; deftly launched on its true perimeter, and gliding over the smooth surface of the green with the perfect poise, the dainty grace of a swan, moving through the water. What more pitiful sight than a wobbling bowl, wagging its reproachful discs at the clumsy author of its shame! Apart altogether from the result, which may be anything or nothingmost likely nothing—what satisfaction can be got from a badly •delivered bowl? Watch it we will, of course, with

woebegone anxiety, as it painfully struggles to right itself and gain some position in respectable society, but the | artist’s pride in successful achievement is what we can never have. And Bowl Not Short. Show yourself a bowler of spirit. You are bowling for the jack; see that you get there. Be up! If yen are too strong, well you may take the jack with you, or at all events bo in a position for it when some equally enterprising performer with better luck or skill, if you will —succeeds in moving it along. As long as you arc at the back, you have a potential value; and, in the issue may be the salvation of your side. A short bowl is a bad bowl and does not the very term carry its own reproach? “To be short” has an ugly ring wherever it is used; short of funds, short in your accounts, short in temper; where can you be right, when you are short? And better by far, from a bowler’s point of view, that you be short in any, or in all of these ways, than short in your bowls, which is one of the cardinal sins. Take The Green, And finally, you must take the green. I A narrow bowl is a poor, weak, deI generate thing. It is cravonly creeping j away from the desired objective, not j bravely advancing towards it. It is ! despised from its birth, even by its ! disconsolate progenitor. | And, being inherently bad, the fur- ' ther it goes, the worse it becomes, j ending, at times, its ignominious ' career in the neighbouring rink, from ; which il is promptly ejected into the outer darkness of the ditch, with i the kick of unspeakable contempt, i

Should it. In spite of its radical defect, possess any virtue at all, as by resting in the draw on the other hand, and so having a chance of being butted eventually into a scoring position, it only acquires this doubtful virtue by possession of the other miserable defect, that of being short; thus tragically illustrating how it is possible, after all, in spite of the adage, for two wrongs to make a sort of right. Even a Stranger Would Know. But what self-respecting bowler could, without the blush of ingenuous shame, behold his bowl in a position of honour in the score, with the conscious guilt of such double offence? ‘‘To be narrow” indeed. The term has a melancholy expressiveness of its own. Even a stranger to the game would know a narrow bowl could not be a good one. To be of narrow means, narrowminded, of narrow outlook; these-are grave disabilities in life, misfortunes often beyond human control. But to be narrow in your bowls is not a misfortune. it is an offence, which, by persevering effort and grim determination, you can largely avoid. For the narrow bowl, like its ugly brother, the short one. will surely in the end, if you keep their bad company, bring the penalty of being shot —-yes shot, alas out of the team and debarred for ever from the full enjoyment of a happy bowler’s life.