JEDDAH, 23 March 2007 — Bowling aficionado Abdullah Al-Shaikh has three sons who took up bowling. Of course, everybody now knows Badr and Hassan Al-Shaikh of the Asian Games fame. Abdullah’s third son, Khalid, has stayed away after a fling with the game.
Badr and Hassan both have established a reputation as the best Saudis to ever roll a ball despite their young age. Badr scored 14 perfect 300 games and will be the first Arab to see action in the 2007 World Tenpin Masters in Barnsley Metrodome, England from April 20-22 where he is to pit skills with 16 other participants.
Passionate about bowling like their father, 20-year old Badr and Hassan, 17, see bowling as an addiction. “It is a sport that is easy to practice but hard to master,” said Badr who is taking up Petroleum Engineering at King Saud University in Riyadh.
“You may not like it in the beginning, but once you know the rules well, you for sure would fell in love with it. The risks you have to make each time you hold the bowling ball in your fists to drop dead all the pins gives it this sense of continued challenges,” he said during the telephone interview from Riyadh.
A sports lover, Badr had played volleyball, table tennis, football, billiards and snooker, but he had to drop all these in favor of the one sport he adores, bowling.
Since the brothers started playing professionally after their father had taken them under the coach’s supervision, “the longest period I stopped playing was for 12 days due to exams only,” Badr said.
There was no club for bowling back then, the only way was to visit theme parks and play at the bowling halls provided. During the national team coach’s visit to the Kingdom’s provinces to choose the best players fit to present the Kingdom, Badr and his brother were chosen after a two weeks training camp where they proved their excellence in the game.
With their achievements in bowling Badr and Hassan might as well be the torchbearers of the Saudi game. People started learning about the existence of bowling through them and their participations.
Badr’s first official participation was to represent the national team in 2002 at the Gulf Cup in Qatar. “That was overwhelming,” Badr said. Even if he did not score well as he expected, being surrounded with the champions and the ones he looked up to was an experience in itself.
“Back then I did not see it coming, I never thought I would beat all those who are my role models like Qatari Ahmed Shahin and UAE’s Mohammed Al-Inizi but it happened in Asiad, yet I owe them all respect,” he said. If the Asiad were only for bowling, Saudi Arabia he said would have become the champion of the event. “We managed to beat Korea, Singapore and Malaysia the toughest competitors,” said Badr.
It was the first time for Badr and Hassan to participate together in the Asian Games, but the third time to win the men’s doubles. “We never played against each other. My brother Hassan is tough and I look forward to play against him one time and I believe it will be soon,” said Badr.
Steadily but surely the brothers made their marks. In 2004 Badr won a gold and silver medal at the Arab Championship in Egypt. In 2005, he clinched three gold medals and two silver medals at the Gulf Championship for youth in Kuwait, in addition to a bronze at the Arab Championship for men in Jordan, and another bronze at the World Cup for men in Slovenia. In 2006, at the Jeddah Gulf Cup for men, he won two bronze, at the Arab Championship for youth he delivered a gold and silver medals in Kuwait, at the World Youth Cup in Germany he placed fifth, and in Qatar’s 15th Asian Games he did his best to win two golds (doubles and all-events) and two bronze medals (trios and team of five).
Badr also looks forward to becoming like the American Walter Ray Williams Jr. who is the world’s leading professional tenpin bowler.
The brothers honed their skills by playing in leagues organized by Filipino bowling groups. According to Badr there were not as many Saudi players compared to Filipinos who bowl. “This is how we learned the background and rules of the game,” Badr said in reference to their stints in tournaments at Riyadh Bowling Club.
Playing bowling has become part and parcel of their daily lives.
To support their “addiction” Badr and Hassan had to rely on their father’s generosity. The father was only too willing to bear the costs in the expensive sport of bowling for his sons’ sake.
He gave them confidence for he knew his sons have got what it takes to become champions one day. “When my father said he has faith in us to make it up to him and make him proud. This was very helpful for us to become what we are now,” said Badr.
The family had been big supporters especially his father who attends most of their tournaments especially the last one in Asiad,” he said.
Speaking about the difficult years of being bowlers, Badr said, it would definitely be 2005 and 2006. He explains studying and knowing that once you miss a class nothing would be repeated or explained to you afterwards, it was terrifying to study as twice in a short period of time and get to the exams not knowing if it was the answer the teacher wanted or not.
“Some teachers would agree to explain but they tell us, I could explain it but without any passion or interest. So I gave up and just depended on myself and trust in God who knows what we are going through.”
Also, the pressure of reaching semifinals and finals in more than one event after the other was the biggest load of pressure I ever felt, he said. “Especially when you have few points to claim the title and you know your whole nation wants you to get it; you do not want to fail them.”
Nevertheless, during the same past two years and with all the difficulties we managed, said Badr as he stressed Saudis can excel in bowling, thanks to God, in both short and long lanes. Gulf championships have a different flavor like when you play with youth and with men.
The bowling veterans in the men’s competition pose extra challenge, he said. Bowling is a world of people who lead stable lives, he said, though it is filled with responsibilities and many obligations. Each one has a technique uniquely his own. “Even though we are brothers and share the same interest, each one of us has his own style I believe,” said Badr.
Hassan agreed and said that is why when one of them succeeds in an event, it shows how one masters a thing over the other considering the distance of the lanes and its oil percentage.
“Yet bowling remains the game where your get mesmerized and whether you’re a child or a grown-up you just follow it as the ball loops and hits,” said Hassan.
“Kelna Habayeb,” he added which means, “we are all friends” when asked of any discrimination among bowlers from the Kingdom’s various districts. “We are good friends whether during matches or outside it.”
One he added should be aware of the other and new techniques, but Badr prefers to concentrate on what his coach British coach Mario Joseph prefers. Joseph took the Al-Shaikhs under his tutelage for the 2005 World Cup in which Badr placed third. Other teams in the Gulf Badr added might have two or three coaches, “but Joseph was very generous in providing us with all the information we could possibly need.”
Hassan’s records were impressive as well. He scored three perfect games and won 17 medals, among them, a gold medal in the 2004 Arab Youth Championship in Egypt, a gold and two silver medals in the Gulf Youth Cup in Kuwait, three bronze and a silver medal in the Arab Championship in Jordan in 2005.
In 2006, Hassan received two silver medals in Kuwait at the Arab Youth Championship, two bronze and two silver medals in the Gulf Cup for men in Jeddah, and finally one gold and two bronze medals in the 15th Asian Games in Doha, Qatar. The brothers said they would have loved to be joined by their country’s women in competitions.
“It was nice to see the other Gulf countries’ teams including men and women who come in Asia to participate,” said Badr. Even in Saudi Arabia he believed both sexes could excel in bowling and bring honor to their country.
Finally, the brothers wished to continue bowling but requested more attention. At least discharging them from having to pay lane fees during training throughout the year, they agreed.
They also wish for Saudi federations to request teachers at schools and universities to give more leeway to athletes who miss classes when they represent national teams abroad.
