The inaugural Super 16 League lawn bowling tournament will get underway at the RCGC Maidan bowling greens on October 29.

As many as 128 players will take part in the league, which will feature 16 teams with the final scheduled on November 18. Each team will comprise eight players.

An auction was also held at the RCGC (main club) on Monday evening.

BLC High Rollers, Asian Bowls, City Knights, RSH Signature, Igniters, Jai Ho, The Panthers, Thunderbowls, Friends Forever, Planet Bowls, The Royal Bowlers, Fire Bowls and Verdant Colts are among the 16 teams that would be divided into four groups.

Two teams will qualify for the quarter finals from each group.

The league has been conceptualised by current Bengal lawn bowling captain Devesh Srivastava, who’s also the tournament convener.

Alongside Srivastava, Samit Malhotra, Kamal Sharma and S. Vishwanath Pai are the other players with both national and international experience to be competing in this league.

“The idea behind having this competition is to encourage more and more bowlers to participate and create a talent pool going forward,” Srivastava said.

“Lawn bowling has started picking up in the last couple of years. When I started playing about 20 years ago, there were only 20-25 players who were seriously playing. Now we have close to 80-90 regular players and when you have these tournaments, like the RBL (Royal Bowling League) and now this Super 16, it (number of players) was obviously expected to cross 100,” said Malhotra, who also represented India at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games.