Narrow triples win

Men's 2 Bowls Rinks County Competition match this evening. In other words, two bowls triples played over twenty-one ends. Up against stiff competition, three bowlers from White Hart Bowls Club, the top Club in the area and home of Nick Brett, 2016 indoor world champion.

There's nothing in it over the first nine ends. If anything, we're fortunate to be level. Several times we save the day with a single bowl when White Hart are lying three or four. Then we annoy them with three winning ends to go 10-7 ahead. White Hart respond with five consecutive winning ends. Gulp! Now 10-15 to them, five ends to go.

Four straight wins to us. As we go into the last end we're ahead 16-15. Playing lead, I manage to get a bowl right on the jack. Surely that's it. But no, their lead knocks me out and they win the single needed to go into an extra deciding end.

They win the toss and hand us the jack, so their skip has the last bowl of the match. Of all the bowls I've delivered this evening, this first is the most critical. Put it right behind the jack. My second isn't bad either, a couple of inches in front of the jack. Their lead has a great response, his last inches to the right of the jack.

It's a dangerous position and their second bowler looks like he's played an inch perfect shot with weight to knock their lead's bowl through, carrying the jack. Unbelievably, the bowl is knocked through the head without moving the jack or either of my bowls. We go on to win the deciding end by two!

A fantastically exciting match, we really got our money's worth. Came away much happier. Still a few too many short bowls, but in the final few ends of the match I remembered some advice my brother Robert gave me during the afternoon about adjusting length and that really helped. Here's the scorecard.