The eight-nation invitational 'Lawn Bowls' event kicked off here on Tuesday.
The five-day event has top Lawn Bowl-playing nations participating including Australia, New Zealand, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Malaysia, and South Africa, besides hosts India.
The popular British sport will make its debut at the 2010 Commonwealth Games to be held here this October.
Indian lawn bowler Dinesh Kumar said that the game will have a bright future in India only if there are good facilities made available.
"Lawn bowl is a skilled game. India is always in the forefront. If facilities like this are available for us then more and more players will come forward and this game will have bright future," said Kumar.
The tournament is being played in singles; pairs and triples format in both men and women categories.
Lawn Bowls Federation of India (LBFI) President Sunaina Kumari, who inaugurated the event, hoped that India would perform well at the forthcoming Commonwealth Games, as it is getting an opportunity to play with the lawn bowling champions of the world.
"Just playing and having experience with players is a great opportunity for the Indian team because training is a different thing, playing on your own on the surface is a different thing. But when you are having these interactions with the best champions in the world, you get more of an idea," said Sunaina Kumari.
"I think this is a great opportunity and, in fact, a lot of countries also congratulated us and told us that this was a great idea to have this, especially an invitation for all the seven countries. So it's not like it's only associated to certain sections or states or countries, it's the seven best countries," she added.
India won the 2009 Asian Lawn Bowl Championship in China besides winning the Asia-Pacific Championships.
It also qualified for the World Cup to be held in Australia from April 22 to 29.
Lawn bowls is very popular in Australia, United Kingdom, New Zealand and other Commonwealth nations. The sport is generally played on a 34 to 40 square meters of closely cut grass called the 'greens'.
The object of lawn bowling is to bowl a ball closest to the target a small Yellow ball called 'jack'. (ANI)
