NEW ZEALAND BOWLERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19976, 19 June 1928, Page 13

NEW ZEALAND BOWLERS

COMMENT ON THEIR PLAY. A COMPARISON OF HABITS. USE OF THE SKITTLE SHOT. [from our own correspondent.] LONDON. May 16. A sufficient number of matches have evidently now been played by the visiting New Zealand bowlers to enable exports to comment on their play. "Jack o'Green," writing in various journals, says the New Zealand men are a little surprised that here it is the winning lead who lays the mat, and that the threes stay with the skip till it is their turn to play. But the chief difference in ideas about the game (the writer continues) is that following up (he bowl is restricted in New Zealand, but is freely allowed here. Hence the mannerisms of many of our players will seem amusing to the New Zealanders, for their own players "know no such liberty," as the cavalier poet sang. But I think they will like our style well enough not to want to persuade us to alter it, even if they do not carry it home with them to form new habits there. And what can we learn from the New Zcalander ? It is too early in the tour yet to pass considered comments on the play of the visitors. Students of their game, however, will find they make a fuller use of skittle shots than we do in this country. I think most bowlers will be inclined to agree that, so far as we understand the game, this is not (he highest form of tactics. One Bold Blow. Past shots are sound and sporting play when the state of the game calls for one, but most skips try to keep the necessity for striking out of their game. Where the end is carefully built up on a sound plan, it should bo necessary to drive only as a last resort. For—and this is not fully realised by all players—skittle shots arc purely defensive play. They represent the last effort of the losing side to recover position in one bold blow. A skittle shot is so often a shot in the dark. Unless the player is one of the highest class he can have very little certainty about what the result of his shot will be.

Yet it is certain that our New Zealand friends do not strike for the sake of striking. They must have a definite object behind their game, or they would not succeed as they do. The rights and wrongs of firing shots are largely a matter of the time arid the place. Firing your last shot, missing everything, and perhaps even making a bad score worse is obviously an error of tactics, to say the least of it. And I believe this is liable to be the fate of the best players occasionally. You cannot—however good you may be —get the same degree of certainty into firing as you can into other shots. It is "chancy" play at the best, and the occasional remarkable successes are balanced by the occasional complete failures. The Sound Method. The sound way to build up an end is to play to figures—to aim to score just enouqh points at each end to put you a little ahead of the opponents, and keep you there. A really first-class skip will place his woods around the jack head so that, whatever his opponents may do, the score can only be a low one either way. Experience proves that these tactics win matches consistently, week in and week out. Luck there must always be in any game, but this method of playing bowls reduces chance to a. minimum and gives skill the big opportunities of the day. The real objection to firing shots is in their abuse, not in their use. " The Toucher," writing in the Devon and Exeter Gazette, remarks:—The New Zealand tourists are the best of jolly good fellows, and to meet them is to realise the comradeship of the bowling green in its highest sense. They play the game for the pleasure it brings, and, though they naturally go all out to win, the result is with them a secondary consideration. They smiled at Bude when they won against Cornwall, and they showed everybody at Barnstaple they could smile with equal cheeriness when they went under to Devon. . . . On the whole, the form shown by the visitors gives one confidence to prophecy that, in a very short time, when English greens begin to feel the effect of tho sun, they will give tho best of the" home sides an exceedingly good run. They must by no means bo judged by the somewhat moderate performances they put up against the Isle of Wight and Hampshire, for not only did the weight of the green militate against them in those cases, but it must remembered the members of the team had very little knowledge of one another's play. Tho Observer comments: —"The New Zealand bowlers are now in Wales. So far their match play has been disappointing, and confirms the first impression that they are not equal to the team here in 1921."