A NEW bowling competition is coming to Furness.

The Drakes Pride BIG Smash 2015 will take place at Dalton Cricket Club on May 4.

All 64 spaces in the competition were full after just 36 hours and players from Cumbria, Lancashire, Merseyside, Yorkshire, Birmingham, Stoke and Manchester will compete.

The idea is the brainchild of Dalton's Neil Jones, 29, and Robert Lindsay, 30.

"The BIG Smash started off as an idea and a way of how to make bowls come into the same modern world as such sports as darts, snooker and cricket have," explained Neil, who took up the game nine years ago.

"Every competition was just the same every week in the area. So myself and Robert put our heads together and came up with The BIG Smash.

"21 points can take a minimum of 45 minutes up to an hour so we have tried to shorten the game and make it a bit faster and entertaining for the crowd.

"We came up with the format in July and to test the water with the public we created an anonymous Facebook page for the competition. The feedback was instantly positive. Bowlers from across the UK were asking how to enter it.

"We both play at Dalton Cricket Club and knew we wanted the competition to be held there, so we went to the committee, they agreed immediately and let us have any date we wanted."

The headline rules are:

• Each game will be a total of 20 ends

• The player with the most points at the end of end 20 wins

• Power Ends will be played at ends 5, 10, 15 and 20, these ends will be worth double points.

• In the event of a tie at the end of end 20, a 1 wood end off will be played. A coin will be tossed to determine who leads the jack.

• The competition will be redrawn at the end of each round.

Neil added: "To boost the prize pot we then sent letters and emails out to local businesses and also emails to big bowling companies.

We received an email back from Drakes Pride stating they get requests every day like this, but this idea was so fresh and different they wanted to be involved.

"Bowls UK then got in touch with us to sponsor along with the following local businesses, HBP construction Ltd, The General Burgoyne, The Golden Ball, Auto Diesel Technics, The Black Dog Inn, The Bridge Inn and South Lakes Lettings.

"We are also currently in talks with some further potential sponsors so we are hopeful the prize pot will rise again in the next few weeks."

The winner will receive £1,000 while the runner up will get £400. Semi-finalists will receive £200, quarter finalists £120 and players who make the last 16 will get £70. The player with the highest break will also receive £50.

"A lot of time and effort has gone into the organisation already, we timed matches during the league season to see how long it took games to get to 20 ends, an average of 33 minutes. This meant that we were confident of holding the competition in one day on one green."