Ahah, now I know nothing about the actual game of bowling but I know a fair bit about bowling greens, as I spent several summers in my student days looking after the greens at Ainsworth, Chapelfield and Allen's Green in Radcliffe, all crown greens of course. Each green had a dedicated high-quality petrol cylinder mower with close-set blades and were self-propelled with a clutch mechanism. Two strips top, two strips bottom then VERY straight stripes up and down. There times a week, one up and down, one left and right and one diagonal (that was the hardest). All edges trimmed once or twice a week. There was a definite knack to using the clutch at the end of each strip, turning round without marking the grass and keeping moving. The home teams always wanted me to cut the greens because I got good at keeping the lines exactly straight and all the same width. A crown green is not an exact science - there are tiny dips and humps, barely perceptible to the eye, that the home team get to know in intimate detail. I got to know them as well and had to be careful not to let them upset my line, and skimming the turf off the tops of eminences was a mortal sin. Apart from wet weather preventing the scheduled cutting, two other hazards were heavy dew and worm casts. I had a high-tech piece of kit that consisted of a long pole with a long, skinny bamboo cane extension with which I could swish off the dew and casts. However, you couldn't swish off the casts if they were wet, as you'd just smear them over the grass, another mortal sin. It was a very rewarding job!