Richard Gale explains a point at the RCGC Maidan open bowls camp. Picture by Subhro Saha

“Two short steps, focus on the jack, watch your balance, go….” Richard Gale, the Australian bowls coach, puts his wards through their paces on the Maidan green of the Royal Calcutta Golf Club (RCGC).

Lawn bowls, for long the preserve of members of the Royal, is reaching out to a wider audience for the first time through an open camp that aims at teaching the finer points as well as fundamentals.

“Bowls is a wonderful sport you can play from nine to 90. We are using the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi as a vehicle to popularise this little-known game and Gale is helping us with this training project, the first such open camp in Calcutta,” says Raj Bengani, the secretary-general of the Bowling Federation of India and an executive committee member of the Indian Olympic Association. The camp ended last month.

Bowls is a sport in which the goal is to roll slightly asymmetric balls, called bowls, closest to a smaller, usually white, bowl called the “jack” or “kitty”. Bowls, either flat or crown-green, is usually played outdoors, on grass and synthetic surfaces. Flat-green bowls can also be played indoors on synthetic surfaces. Both variants are collectively known as “lawn bowls”.

Traditionally, Calcutta has been the nerve centre of lawn bowls, and four of the 12 gold medals Bengal won at the 33rd National Games in Guwahati, came from bowling. Local lad S.V. Pai, who won the recently-concluded state championship, is also the reigning national champion.

In an effort to broadbase the appeal of the sport, bowling facilities were earlier set up at the Bengal Rowing Club and the Punjab Club tennis courts next to South Club.

“But thanks to lack of knowledge in green-keeping and lukewarm response, neither club could continue with the game,” says A.K. Basu, the vice-president of the Bowling Federation of India.

Basu, who is also the secretary-general of the state bowling association, promises many more open camps and feels carpet courses in clubs and schools could be the tool to increase participation. At the moment, the manicured Maidan green of the Royal remains the only facility to play lawn bowls in the city.

Setting up a course and maintaining it properly requires a huge investment. RCGC is toying with the idea of converting three-fourths of its lawn into artificial carpet for bowls, to whittle down maintenance cost.

Gale feels there’s much more that could be done to help the sport really take off. “For instance, one can have corporate beer-and-bowl functions like in Australia.”

The Salt Lake centre of the Sports Authority of India will soon have a six-lane carpet course, says Bengani.