Bowls

Marks began to deal during a postgraduate philosophy course at Oxford and was soon moving large quantities of hashish into Europe and America in the equipment of touring rock bands. The academic life began to lose its allure.

At the height of his career, he was smuggling consignments of up to 30 tons from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada and had contact with organisations as diverse as the CIA, MI6, the IRA, and the Mafia.

After many years and a world-wide operation by the Drug Enforcement Agency, he was busted and sentenced to 25 years in prison at the United States Federal Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Indiana, the site of America’s only Federal Death Row. He was released on parole in April, 1995, after serving seven years of his sentence...

Since receiving my senior railcard and free bus pass, I concern myself with still untried challenges. Consistently heading the list is competency at any sport. I have never attempted to ride a bicycle, row a boat, windsurf, skate, or ski. I have not been slightly tempted to hang-glide, pole vault, climb a mountain, or step into a ring to box or wrestle. My physical exercise has been largely limited to a bit of yoga, walking while carrying suitcases, and dancing all night under the influence of a psychedelic drug. It was time to change.

I considered archery and bowls. Each requires minimal stamina, strength and flexibility. Anyone of either sex, aged from nine to 90, can play both.


Loitering around the streets with a criminal record as long as mine is dicey enough. Carrying a box of what resemble cannonballs would be inviting trouble, while arming oneself with a crossbow and a quiver full of arrows would be clearly suicidal. Of the two, bowls seemed a marginally safer pursuit. I looked at its history.

The Ancient Egyptians played bowls. The game spread through well-entrenched channels of commerce and culture to Ancient Greece, Rome and the rest of Europe. Aztecs, Native-American Indians, Maoris, Chinese, and Polynesians all played varieties of the game. During 14th Century England, bowls became much more popular than archery. The fear of the monarchy that the skill of archers in battle would suffer led to Parliament passing statutes restricting or forbidding the playing of bowls. Edward III banned all bowling games within London, and Henry IV imprisoned those caught playing. However, many illegal bowling alleys opened and, according to the authorities, played host to “unlawful assemblies, conventicles, seditions, and conspiracies”. Henry VIII, a keen bowls player himself, banned the game for those who were not “well to do”. Despite Henry’s 1541 Act remaining in force until 1845, the English commoner carried on bowling in the face of heavy fines and imprisonment. Bowling locations popped up everywhere, and serious gambling at them was commonplace.

On July 18, 1588, Sir Francis Drake, the greatest sailor of his generation, was bowling at Plymouth Hoe when the Spanish Armada came into view sailing up the British Channel.  His immortalised response: “We still have time to finish the game and to thrash the Spaniards, too.” Sir Francis lost the match but smashed the Armada. I was comforted to learn that one of the greatest commemorations of any British historical hero is that of an Elizabethan 48-year-old pirate (an old geezer in those days) breaking the law. I could not wish for a sport with a more appropriate role model or personification. This has to be the game for me.

In 1522, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, accidentally cracked one of his woods during the middle of a game. He rushed indoors and sawed off an ornamental ball from a banister. As one part of the ball was flat, its trajectory curved at the end of its run instead of continuing in a straight line. Playing with bias enhanced the game with intricacy, sophistication, and challenge. One could successfully aim the wood to come to rest in positions impossible to achieve with a normal, fully-rounded ball. Soon, all woods had bias built in, originally achieved by appropriately weighting and later by shaping one side of the wood to be less round than the other.

Every sport has its bad boy, usually someone with enormous talent who also likes a caning session. Griff Sanders from Devon is the bad boy of bowls. The movie Blackball is about him. John McEnroe verbally abused umpires; Diego Maradona sniffed cocaine; Eric Cantona kick-boxed a football fan; Ian Botham smoked weed; Ben Johnson ran too fast on steroids; and Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield’s ear. None of them was punished as severely as Griff Sanders. His inappropriate dining routine (drinking lager, smoking cigarettes, and eating a bag of chips while playing), flouting of the dress code (wearing multicoloured socks, T-shirt, and Bermuda shorts), and disrespect for officials (calling the county secretary a “tosser”) disqualified him from the Devon County first team while he was county champion. Eventually, Griff was banned from playing any outdoor bowls for ten years and told not to make a fuss, as ten years was merely a sixth of a bowls player’s average career.

Bowls is not currently famous as a sexy sport, but there are plenty of handsome hunks ligging around the lawns, bending their backs and sporting their equipment, and fit females love to play old men’s marbles. It is not widely acclaimed as druggy or cool, but a game of bowls is called a “roll up”, and the quality of the grass is of the utmost importance, so it at least shares a vocabulary with pastimes that are. It’s hardly rock and roll, but I think I like it.