'WE NEED MORE TRAINING CENTRES'

Indian Lawn Bowl team has won several international gold medals including Commonwealth Games and Asian Championships; to achieve more we need better facilities and coaches

- MILIND DHAMDHERE

In India, where Cricket is termed as religious, probably no one has thought that one day our women's Lawn Bowl team will create a headline by winning the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games. The Indian team of Lovely Choubey, Rupa Rani Tirkey, Pinki and Nayanmoni Saikia won this historic medal. This is the first time that India has won a medal in this sport in the Commonwealth Games held last year since the inception of these games.

The Indian Lawn Bowl team put a stamp on their persistent performance by winning the gold medal in women's four events at the 14th Asian Lawn Bowls Championship in Kuala Lumpur, just concluded. Indian players have earlier won many medals at Asian Championship as well as the Asian Pacific championships. But people found there is such a sport called Lawn Bowl when our women's team made the historical triumph at the Commonwealth Games last year.

Without a coach and facilities

The performance of our players in this game is really appreciable as in these games our team participated without any specialised coach, international level infrastructure and other facilities. In fact, our team members tried to take the help of coaches from local clubs in England before the Commonwealth Games, but they couldn't get such a facility either due to the non-availability of coaches or huge fees quoted by the few available coaches. Our women players studied their earlier performances in previous Commonwealth Games as well as the Asian level Championship. This study helped them to reach the top place in this competition.

During the process of winning the gold medal, our women's team defeated Norfolk Islands in the quarter-finals, followed by a surprise and thrilling win over title contenders New Zealand in the semi-finals.