Lawn bowls team hopes to survive knockout stage in UK

The Kenya Lawn bowls team to the Commonwealth Games is looking at going past the group stages in the competition in Birmingham.

The team was selected in March 2022 through a trial process of competitive bowls where were they were about 30 players who applied to be included in the team.

The top 10 were picked and then they were cut to 4 who joined the residential training on 15th June.

Training has been at different venues across the country at Nairobi Club, Karen and at the Moon Country Club in Njoro.

“We are going to Birmingham to try and qualify for the knockout stages. We have been competing in Commonwealth Games since 1998, and we are yet to make it out of the knockout stages.

Top level

“We got very close on the African stage. The strongest nation is South Africa which have won multiple Commonwealth Game’s gold medals and so have Zimbabwe. In the last competitive competition in Africa, we defeated the South African singles champion. So, we can play at the top level but we still need to put a bit of investment to get right at the top table,” team manager Musembi Mumo said.

International rankings have not been done for the last two years because of the COVID 19 pandemic. With no recent international competitions, the organisers are using old data from the last Commonwealth Game four years ago.

 This will change in the next two years because there will be international events both the Africa State tournament and the World Bowls Championships.

Lawn bowls is played on a grass pitch which is about 40m by 40m. Each grass pitch called green is divided into sections which are just like 7 playing sections. Each team has four

playing woods (balls) which, they hold and play with. Each team tries to get as close as possible

to a white ball which is called the Jack, and that’s how a team scores. And the Jack is then placed

about 23m from where you are and then you roll the ball towards it, and at the end of the

four balls, the count is done to see who is closer. The closest gets a point. For each wood that

is closer than any of the opponent’s wood, a point is scored. The maximum a player can get is

four points, the minimum is one point. They are added up on a scoreboard and the players go

up and down 18 times where the person with more points wins the game.