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BOWLING
One of the oldest games in the world still guarantees great fun. By Aninda Sardar

As Rip van Winkle followed the funny little dwarf he heard the distant sounds of thunder. The sounds, as it transpired, were being made by dwarfs playing a peculiar game where they rolled a ball on the ground to knock down nine wooden pins. There are few who are not aware of the story, or the game of bowling. While it had appeared strange to lazy old Rip, the game is a common pastime today at a recreational as well as competitive level. Muscat has no less than four bowling alleys, Sheraton Oman, City Bowling, Seeb Novotel and Oman Bowling Centre, where you can head to and enjoy the game that Rip van Winkle watched the dwarfs play in the Catskill Mountains.

And so we headed off to the Oman Bowling Centre, which is located opposite the Holiday Inn in Al Khuwayr. A quick payment at the counter – RO1.500 per person, a swift change into the special mismatched shoes and you're set. The fluorescent coloured balls are numbered according to weight although the numbers, confusingly, are not the weight of the balls. The alley is opened and a suspended score screen lights up above your head. You hook your fingers into the ball, gather momentum and let fly at the foul line. Then you pray hard that the ball knocks off as many pins as possible and doesn't head into the gutter on either side.

In modern times the sport of bowling is perceived to be an American recreation, yet the game's history tells us otherwise. A quick internet search will show you that the earliest form of the game existed in ancient Egypt as far back as 3200BC. The first written mention of the sport, however, did not appear until 1366AD when King Edward III outlawed the game to keep his archers concentrated on target shooting. While the Dutch and the English settlers of untamed America brought their own version with them, the first standardisation of rules for bowling took place on September 9, 1895 at the Beethoven Hall in New York City. It was then that the American Bowling Congress was started and national championships started in earnest. Women's bowling took another 22 years to materialise. Bowling eventually reached the zenith of popularity in the 1950s when NBC broadcast the show Championship Bowling. Since then the sport has come a long way and is no longer restricted to the Americas.

Lanes and pins
The playing surface is called an alley, or lane. Approximately 78ft long and 42 inches wide, the alley has gutters on either side. If the ball goes off the edge of the alley it drops into the gutter and is carried past the pins. The approach is a 15ft long area ending at the foul line, which the bowler cannot cross while making his approach. The headpin is about 60ft beyond it. The pins are arranged in four rows, with one pin in the first row, two in the second, three in the third, and four in the fourth. The pins themselves don't carry specific numbers, but the spots on which they are placed do.

The regulation pin is made of hard maple and is 15 inches high with a diameter of 2.25 inches at the base and a circumference of 15 inches at its widest point. Weight of the pins must be between two pounds 14 ounces and three pounds ten ounces. The regulation ball is of solid composition, has a maximum circumference of 27 inches, and weighs between ten and 16 pounds. A ball may have two or three finger holes; most bowlers use the three-holed ball, inserting the two middle fingers and the thumb into the holes.

Bowling in ordinary shoes isn't permitted, because it can damage the lanes. The peculiarities of the sport demand an unmatched pair of shoes. The right-handed bowler wears a left shoe with a relatively slippery sole, usually of hard leather or vinyl, and a right shoe with a rubber sole that will help brake.

Progress of play
Bowling is played in ‘strings’ or games. Each is made up of ten ‘frames.’ A frame represents one turn for the bowler, and in each turn the player is allowed to roll the ball twice. If the player knocks down all the pins with the first roll, it is a ‘strike.’ If not, a second roll at the pins still standing is attempted. If all the pins are knocked down with two balls it is a ‘spare.’ In case there are any pins left standing, it is an ‘open frame.’

If a bowler commits a foul by stepping over the line during delivery, it counts as a shot, and any pins knocked down are re-spotted without counting. Pins knocked down by a ball that has entered the gutter or by a ball bouncing off the rear cushion do not count.

The perfect score
In an open frame, a bowler simply gets credit for the number of pins knocked down. In the case of a spare, a slash mark is recorded in a small square in the upper right hand corner of that frame on the score sheet and no score is entered until the first ball of the next frame is rolled. Then credit is given for ten plus the number of pins knocked down with that next ball. If a bowler gets a strike it is recorded with an ‘X’ in the small square, the score being ten plus the total number of pins knocked down in the next two rolls. Thus, the bowler who rolls three strikes in a row in the first three frames gets credit for 30 points in the first frame. Bowling's perfect score, a 300 game, represents 12 strikes in a row – a total of 120 pins knocked down. You can aim for that in at least four locations across Muscat, with more on their way soon.