India clinched their second medal in the lawn bowls event at the Commonwealth Games 2022 in Birmingham on Saturday.
The men’s fours team bagged a silver medal after losing to Northern Ireland in the final. The final score read 18-5 in favour of Northern Ireland.
The Indian team comprised Sunil Bahadur (lead), Navneet Singh (second), Chandan Kumar Singh (third), and Dinesh Kumar (skip).
On the other hand, The Northern Ireland team included Cam Barkley (lead), Adam McKeown (second), Ian McClure (third), and Martin McHugh (skip).
Northern Ireland’s last gold medal in lawn bowls came back in the 1998 edition of the muli-nation event.
In the final, India struggled and failed to open their account in the first four ends, as their opponents led 7-0.
India finally earned their first point after five ends, but that hardly mattered to the Northern Ireland team, as it extended its domination and stretched the lead to seven points after 10 ends. The scoreline read 12-5 at that stage of the final.
The Indian team had defeated hosts England by a close 13-12 margin in the semifinal to assure the country of at least a silver medal.
This comes after the women’s team of Lovely Choubey (lead), Pinki (second), Nayanmoni Saikia (third) and Rupa Rani Tirkey (skip) beat South Africa 17-10 in the women’s fours final to win the historic gold medal for India on Tuesday.
Lawn Bowls rules:
Lawn Bowls is played in three formats essentially singles, doubles, and fours, depending on the number of individuals pitted against each other.
The player/team which manages to place its bowls closer to the stationary target, called ‘The Jack’, are awarded the points.
The bowls need to be rolled on the floor from a distance.
In the fours, or four-player, format, each team gets eight throws, or rolls, from one ‘end’. One ‘end’ means completion of one round.
The team with more points after all the ends of throws will take the contest.
(Inputs from PTI)