Bolas criollas

Bolas criollas is a traditional Venezuelan team game of throwing, popular in the Llanos and other rural regions of the country. It belongs to the family of target-throwing games that includes bocce and petanque, and shares their aim: players throw heavy balls as close as they can to a small target ball. The game is played between two teams on a flat rectangular court about twenty metres by thirty. Each team has a set of solid balls about fifteen centimetres across, coloured red and green so the sides can be told apart, while the target, called the mingo, is a small steel or iron ball under five centimetres wide. The team that wins the coin toss throws the mingo first, and the teams then alternate who opens each round. A team scores one point for each of its balls that lies closer to the mingo than the nearest ball of the other team.