Getting a little off subject with this post, however something needs to change or be changed , if not the bowling balls, then it must be the lane conditions.
How does the governing body enforce tougher lane conditions? they can't! they have tried for decades to enforce strict oil patterns, now we have a governing body who turn a blind eye to non-compliment oil patterns.
The conditioning of the lanes needs to be self regulated, one way of doing this would be to make the centre owners responsible and liable to pay out all honour scores shot on their lanes. Rest assure, that if this rule was brought into play, tougher lane conditions would emerge, nullifying the high tech reactive balls overnight, resulting in a dramatic reduction in the number of honour scores immediately!!
There are many reasons why the excessive amount of honour scores is crippling the game...........here is just one.
In simple terms, bowling centres at the moment have pooled together in a national insurance scheme, each centre pays a insurance premium, when a honour score is shot in their centre, they make a insurance claim, pay a excess payment to the insurance company and the award is paid out to the bowler from the money supplied by the insurance claim.
The big problem with this scheme is, some centres make only a few claims each year, which reflects their tough lane conditions or low skilled bowlers, whilst other centres make a claim once per week reflecting their easy lane conditions or higher skilled bowlers.
Regardless of why you think some centre have lots of honour scores and others very little, the fact of the matter is, the annual insurance premium that each centre pays does not reflect the amount of high games in their individual centre. This is causing friction between the centres as the centres with the lower number of honour scores believe they are supporting and being unfairly penalised by the centres with high numbers of honour scores.
The centres with higher numbers of honour scores are being critized for laying down easy lane conditions thus attracting the bowlers.........it's a very delicate situation at the moment, with several other factors to be considered before the problem can solved. If the problem cannot be solved, there won't be any payments for high scores in the very near future, as the individual centres cannot afford to pay an insurance premium without being part of the scheme, and the scheme is in very real danger of imploding.
This system is falling down due to the ever increasing number of honour score being shot. The insurance premiums kept going up, reflecting the huge number of claims paid out every year. It's getting to the stage where the insurance premiums to stay in this scheme won't be worth it for some centres, meaning an increase on the annual premium to reflect the lower number of contributors in the scheme............it's a catch 22 situation.
There is nothing wrong with high scores and high averages in the sport, and there is not a single centre out there who would deny a bowler his honour score and payment, so long as the score was shot on fair but not EASY lane conditions.
Neville
