Jim Pirret, known to all inside bowls and out as ‘Ham’, was the singles representative in three consecutive New Zealand bowls teams at the Empire Games, from 1950-58.

Pirret, who played for the Tuakau club, midway between Hamilton and Auckland, won two national lawn bowls titles, the singles in 1957 and the pairs with C Rogers in 1958, and five Auckland centre titles. He skipped the Tuakau team that finished runner-up in the national championship in 1948 and was runner-up in the national singles championship the following year. In 1956, Pirret became one of the small group of bowlers to have won both indoor and outdoor national titles when he won the indoor singles championship in Hamilton.

But he was better known as the man who made the Empire Games singles berth his own.

In Auckland in 1950, when he was 34, he reached his best form on the Carlton club greens, winning all four of his matches to earn one of New Zealand’s 10 gold medals from the Games. He opened with a hard-fought 25-20 win over Lionel Garnett of Fiji, then edged out Canadian Weston Krupp 25-22. His third win was a solid 26-16 victory over eventual silver medallist Australian Albert Newton and he finished his campaign by comfortably beating South African George Jacobs 25-10.

The Aucklander made a strong effort to retain his crown at the 1954 Empire Games in Vancouver, Canada. With 10 players in the singles field, he had six wins from nine matches, which left him second equal on the points table behind runaway winner Ralph Hodges, representing Southern Rhodesia. Pirret earned the silver medal on a countback over South African Arthur Saunders. He lost the pivotal match, to Hodges, 21-17 in a see-sawing fifth round encounter.

Pirret returned to Empire Games action again in Cardiff in 1958 but didn’t fare as well, finish with six wins and five losses and placed sixth in a field of 12.

Pirret, who was a poultry farmer in Tuakau when he represented New Zealand at bowls, died in 1976.

James Pirret

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