All eyes on Jharkhand in National Lawn Bowls Championship

Kolkata: Jharkhand, which had swept all the eight medals in the last edition, will be the team to watch out for in the 4th National Lawn Bowls Championship that gets underway at the RCGC Maidan tent, here on friday.

Fresh from winning a gold medal at the Asian Championship, Sunil Bahadur will lead the Jharkhand challenge. Jharkhand will also boast of Dinesh Kumar and Lovely Choubey, the Mixed Pairs gold medalist in the Asia Pacific Merdeka Cup this year and Farzana Khan, the mixed pairs silver medalist in the Asia Pacific Merdeka Cup 2012. Lovely, who had won gold medals in the last two Nationals in Delhi and Ranchi, will be looking for a hat-trick. It will be interesting to see how the champions Jharkhand side, which is used to playing on artificial surface, rise to the challenge from natural grass lawns. "The conditions will obviously give Bengal an edge. It will be a real challenge to repeat our last year`s feat," national coach Madhukant Pathak, who is also part of the Jharkhand side, said. About 100 players representing 10 states will vie for eight gold medals in men and women events including singles, pairs, triples and fours.