Men's pair stun favourites

IT WOULD be impossible to label yesterday's achievements on the part of Guernsey's lawn bowls competitors in Delhi as anything other than a copper-bottomed success.

The highlight was the unusual - but nonetheless remarkable - 0-17, 10-7, 3-1 win for Don Batiste and Ian Merrien over England's high-flying Mervyn King and Stuart Airey in the men's pairs.

But equally promising was the performance of Daniel De La Mare's mum Gwen and the irrepressible Lucy Beere, who romped to a routine 13-5, 12-3 win over a pair from the South Pacific island of Niue and gave a hotly-tipped Scottish duo the fright of their lives in the second round of the women's pairs.

Defeated all hands down in the first set by Australian Open pairs champions King and Airey, Batiste and de la Mare kept their heads and took advantage of an English lapse to win the second set, and send the game into a tiebreak.

'It was bitterly disappointing for us,' admitted England team manager John Bell.

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