JEDDAH, 16 February 2007 — XXX Bowlers edged out Al-Mottawer in a thrilling two-way battle for Team of the Week honors and seized the lead as the bonus of a solid third week performance in the ICBL (Inter-Company Bowling League) 20th Conference at Jeddah Lanes here.

XXX and Mottawer occupied the first two spots on 47 and 45 at the end of another unpredictable race for points where the toast of the second week, Nadec Dairy, spun out of control to land near the bottom of the standings and mirror the fate that befell D’ Ultimate.

The first week honoree D’ Ultimate dropped out of sight the second week and, worse, continued their downward spiral by finishing 14th and last on 7 points.

Saudi Diyar were third on the day with 44 points followed by Sky Freight Forwarders on 42 and MC Hammer on 40.5.

Kulisap n Moe were on 36 points as they silently worked their way up the standings to be in second position after three weeks of action in the five-man team Friday league event organized by FTBJ (Filipino Tenpin Bowlers of Jeddah). A.R. Namlah were on 31 points. V Express returned 27.5 points, Nasser Al-Hajri 27 points, Splitters 22, Western Union 21 and Suzuki 17.

In the first game, Mottawer and XXX finished 1-2. Mottawer kept the lead by again taking the first-place points of 14 in the second game with XXX in seventh spot. But a third game monumental collapse that saw Mottawer take a mere 3 points in 12th position gave XXX the big break they were looking. With second-place points of 13 XXX erased the 7-point deficit to lead by three points that was reduced to two after Mottawer pipped them for first place in overall output 3,064-3,007.

Class O bowler Rene Santiago shot the high series of 716 on lines of 224, 213, 279 at the helm of the XXX’s strong performance that had T. Marasigan and Nanding Siasoco hitting 607 and 558 to go with the contributions of 402 from M. Mata, 183-180 from Raffy Masiglat, 189 from Vic Santos and 138 from G. Siasoco. Majid Aslani bowled big at Mottawer stringing games of 252, 242 and 204 for 698.

He found chief backers in P. Acato 607 and Kamal Banjar 590 with Waheeb Kamfar 224 and Zaki Yassin 170-191 completing the games.

Saudi Diyar, the other team to win a game, enjoyed remarkable outputs from Roger Daquioag 627, Priz Calidro 617, E. Domingo 588 and Raul de los Reyes 551. T. Grandia and R. Parinas rounded out the scoring with 189 and 172-156.

Goying Salazar and Rod Morales led Sky Freight with 613 and 594. Helping them out were B. Bonerr with 559, Y. Santos with 546, Edu Toledo with 180 and Ruben Medina with 2324-222.

For MC Hammer it was the duo of Hero Garcia and Jerry Arcos who bore the brunt of the scoring with 578 and 565.

Team standings after the third week:

1. XXX Bowlers 111.5 points 2. Kulisap n Moe 107.0 3. Nadec Dairy 106.0 4. Nasser Al-Hajri Corp. 99.5 5. Al-Mottawer Group 98.0 6. A. R. Namlah 91.5 7. Sky Freight Forwarders 89.0 8. Suzuki 88.0 9. Splitters 86.0 10. MC Hammer 83.0 11. Saudi Diyar 82.0 12. Western Union 79.0 13. D’ Ultimate 76.0 14. V Express 63.5