Bowls SA sends top athletes to World Bowls Indoor Championship
Jason Evans and Esme Kruger will be flying the flag high in Scotland at Aberdeen IBC, April 20-25.
Competitors take part in the Para Mixed Pairs B2/B3 - Section A - Round 4 lawn bowls match between Scotland and England on day five of the Commonwealth Games at Victoria Park in Leamington Spa, central England, on August 2, 2022. Picture: Andy Buchanan / AFP.
JOHANNESBURG – Bowls South Africa (Bowls SA) has two players at the 2025 World Bowls Indoor Championship.
Jason Evans and Esme Kruger will be flying the flag high in Scotland at Aberdeen IBC, April 20-25.
All five corners of the globe will be represented in the six-day event, which pits the European and Oceania powerhouses against those from the Americas, Asia and African regions.
The Championships will see 32 nations, 32 males and 27 women compete against each other.
The sport is played indoors and outdoors on grass or artificial surfaces known as a ‘green’ which is divided into parallel playing strips known as ‘rinks’.
The aim is to roll bowls (slightly radially asymmetrical balls) closest to a smaller white/yellow ball (the ‘jack’ or ‘kitty’).
Kruger won the 2025 BSA Women’s Open title, has multiple local medals and two silver medals in the Women’s Fours at the Commonwealth Games. And she ranks 8th in the world.
She’ll be going against defending women’s singles champion Malaysia’s Nor Farrah Ain Abdullah, the current World Bowls Series’ No. 1 ranked female player, who will be back to defend the title she won last year in Guernsey.
Australia’s Kelsey Cottrell, who was the inaugural No. 1 ranked female when the ranking list was launched in June 2024 and won the mixed pairs in this championship in 2023.
And current No. 3, New Zealand’s 2023 World Bowls Championships women’s singles champion Tayla Bruce.
South Africa’s Evans won his fifth Bowls South Africa Masters title earlier this year and is currently Proteas no.1. He has dominated the Singles circuit, having won the last 4 JBA Singles titles.
He’ll be going against the WBS’ No 3, Australia’s Jack McShane, Scotland’s Stewart Anderson, a three times World Indoor Bowls Championship open singles champion and multiple former winner of this singles and mixed pairs, WBS’ No 12, Wales’ World Bowls champion of champions bronze medallist Ross Owen and Andrew Kyle from Ireland, a previous singles champion at this tournament in 2016.
“World Bowls, International Indoor Bowls Council and Aberdeen Indoor Bowls Club have worked very well in partnership to deliver the 2025 event and we are looking forward to what will be a very competitive competition featuring many world class bowlers together with some players who are new to the world stage” said World Bowls CEO, Neil Dalrymple.