Sabeena Saleem Athika (born 1968) is an Indian bowler from Tamil Nadu. She has won four national championships. She has also participated in five AMF World Cups. In 2006, along with her 20-year-old daughter Sana, Sabeena captured the National Bowling Doubles Championship.
Sabeena Saleem was born in India to a Muslim family. She studied in the Adarsh Vidyalaya in Chennai. She married a businessman, Anwar Saleem, when she was 18 years old, thus leaving her academic and sports career. From her school days, Sabeena was an athlete and sports enthusiast. Sabeena represented her school in throwball, cricket and basketball. She won a lot of trophies in her teenage days. After that, she took up a course to become a fashion designer. It was not until 1998, when she was 30 years old, that she took to the sport of bowling professionally. It is important to note that being from a traditional and conservative Muslim family, it wasn't easy for Sabeena to enter sports. But she got immense support from her family before and after her marriage. Indeed, she gives the credit of her success to her husband, Anwar Saleem and her children, daughter Sana (herself a professional bowler) and son Ahad.
Sabeena took to bowling in 1999 after watching her daughter Sana play the game in a local club. She became so interested in the game that she took it up professionally, putting her business of fashion designing on the back burner. Since then, she has won four National Championships in singles and one in doubles with daughter Sana. Sabeena first won the national championship in 2001 in Mumbai. Then she became the national champion again in 2003 beating D Elizabeth. She has also represented India at the Kuala Lumpur Games in 2002. She was the only Indian woman to qualify for the tourney after she scored at an average of 169.36, just higher than the 165 cut-off average for the Games. She was also the only Indian women to represent the country at the AMF World Cup 2002 in Honduras where 90 countries participated. Out of the 90 participants, she was ranked 61st in the World Cup. Sabeena has also won the National Championships in 2006 and is the current Nation Champion in India.
In late 2006, Sabeena and her daughter Sana made history of sorts after being selected for the Indian bowling team for the Asian Games in Doha. It is for the first time in the history of Indian Bowling that a mother and her daughter have made it to the Asian Games simultaneously. Mother Sabeena and daughter Sana have participated together in tournaments earlier at the Bangkok Open and the National Championships, but not at a stage as big as the Asian Games. When she started, Sabeena's bowling style was straight bowling. However, since 2001, she has been learning hooked bowling and has taken up hooked bowling full-time. She is a self-taught bowling professional.
Koneru Humpy is an Indian chess player who is also reigning women's world rapid champion. In 2002, she became the youngest woman ever to achieve the title of Grandmaster at the age of 15 years, 1 month, 27 days, beating Judit Polgár's previous record by three months. In October 2007, Koneru became the second female player, after Polgár, to exceed the 2600 Elo rating mark, being rated 2606.
Diandra Hyman Asbaty is an American bowler who represented Team USA for fifteen years and was United States Amateur Champion in 1999 and 2006. She is also an official youth bowling spokesperson for the United States Bowling Congress (USBC). She competed in the 2009-10 PBA Women's Series. Asbaty won the 2012 USBC Queens bowling tournament and still competes in tournaments.
Clara Juliana Guerrero Londoño is a Colombian ten-pin bowler who has won Colombian championships and multiple international championships. She has been a member of Team Colombia for twenty years, and another half dozen years on Junior Team Colombia. She has one title on the PWBA Tour since the rebirth of the Professional Women's Bowling Association in 2015.
The QubicaAMF Bowling World Cup, previously known as the International Masters and AMF Bowling World Cup, is an annual Ten-pin bowling championship sponsored by QubicaAMF Worldwide, and the largest in bowling in terms of number of participating nations. Each nation chooses one male and/or one female bowler to represent them in the tournament, and in the majority of cases, this is done by running a qualifying tournament, the winners of which are chosen.
Paul Moor, of Kingston-upon-Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England is one of the world's leading ten-pin bowlers. He bowls on the European Bowling Tour (EBT) and has been a member of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) for several years.
Lynda Barnes is one of the world's leading female ten-pin bowlers. She is a former member of the PWBA. In 1999, Lynda married Chris Barnes who is also a leading Ten-pin bowler on the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) tour. The couple's twin sons, Troy and Ryan, were born in May 2002. Lynda is a current member of Team USA.
Lisa John is an English ten-pin bowler.
Putty Insavilla Armein is an Indonesian ten-pin bowler. She finished in 8th position of the combined rankings at the 2006 AMF World Cup. During the final round she finished in 8th position as well. Her father name is Haji Armein Yuspar and her mother name is Irma Alfat. She won two gold and two bronze medals for Indonesia bowling national team in 2005 Southeast Asian Games in Manila.
Ryan Leonard Lalisang is an Indonesian ten-pin bowler.
Karen Marcano is a Venezuelan ten-pin bowler. In 2008 she finished first in the Women's World Ranking Masters. In 2009 she won a gold medal at the Pan American Bowling Confederation Championships in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She also won the bronze medal at the masters event of the World Games in 2013 in Colombia.
Poulomi Ghatak is a table tennis player from West Bengal, India. She won three junior national championships as well as seven senior national championships between 1998 and 2016. In 1998 she won both the senior national and junior national championships. Poulomi has represented India at the Commonwealth Games at Melbourne in 2006 and the Commonwealth Championships between 2000 and 2008. She played at the Sydney Olympics when she was 16. She also played in the Indian Open finals in 2007. She started playing in 1992 and thereafter went on a successful upward learning curve.
The World Tenpin Bowling Championships is a global event that invites all countries that are members of International Bowling Federation to participate.
Shalin Zulkifli is a former Malaysian professional ten pin bowler and former Asian No. 1. She has played and won various national and international tournaments, and has at various points in her career ranked No. 1 of the professional ten pin bowlers in Malaysia and Asia. During 2001 World Tenpin Masters event, she became the first female champion of this event, defeating Finland's Tore Torgersen in the finals. In 2004, she was inducted into International Bowling Hall of Fame. Bowling in the USA, she was a quarterfinalist at the 2008 US Women's Open, and competed in the 2008-09 PBA Women's Series. In Southeast Asian Games, she is the most successful bowling athlete with 20 gold medals record.
Bong Coo is a 4-time World Champion Filipino bowler. She is a World Bowling Hall of Fame and Philippine Sports Hall of Fame member.
Ann-Maree Putney of New South Wales is a female Australian two-time World Champion ten-pin bowler. In 2009, she was elected to the World Bowling Writers International Bowling Hall of Fame. She competed for Australia for 26 years, winning a total of 30 medals in international competitions such as the World, Asian, and Commonwealth Championships. In 2019, she was inducted into the Tenpin Bowling Australia (TBA) Hall of Fame as well as the Hunter Region Sporting Hall of Fame. Her career spanned 34 years.
Tenpin bowling is a popular and recreational sport in India. The activity is administered by the Bangalore-based Tenpin Bowling Federation of India. It organises the National Bowling League comprising championships for amateurs, corporate team tournaments as well as a national tour for professionals. Many Indians take up bowling for fitness, rather than for recreation. Bowling alleys in India are commonly a part of multiplexes and malls.
Aishwarya Rao is an Indian professional ten-pin bowler based in Singapore.
Shannon Pluhowsky is an American left-handed ten-pin bowler who competes in the Professional Women's Bowling Association (PWBA) and internationally. Pluhowsky is a 21-time and current member of Team USA (2001–present), and a former four-time member of Junior Team USA (2000–2003). Pluhowsky has five professional championships, including major wins at the 2006 USBC Queens in Reno, Nevada and the 2014 BPAA Women's All-Star in Rockford, Illinois.
Cara Honeychurch of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia is a female world champion tenpin bowler. She won the AMF Bowling World Cup in 1996 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and voted Bowler of the Year by the World Bowling Writers the same year. She was inducted to the World Bowling Writers' International Hall of Fame in 1998.