Cue up for national glory

The craze for pool joints may have subsided, but cue sports is where India is making a mark.

Is there any sport where India can boast of having won not one or two but a whopping 20 world titles? Post the World Cup debacle, cricket is out of the question and even in India's glory days in hockey, we did not win that many titles.

Other sports like badminton, chess, where this country has a decent sporting pedigree, are out of the contention as well. The correct answer might just stump you. It is cue sports like billiards and snooker where India has had a fantastic history and the future looks promising as well.

There is a good mixture of young and old talent in cue sports. While veterans like Geet Sethi and Ashok Shandilya are still going strong, there is a talented bunch of youngsters who have been doing well in the sport.

Pankaj Advani is one of the most promising players in the world at the moment. He is one of the few players to have won both the world championships in billiards as well as snooker, that too at the age of just 18 years.

While Sethi is now 45, he has been playing the sport for over two decades, has seen it all and has been more than a role model for youngsters. He still continues to be a rival as well as a mentor for young professionals.

Snooker and billiards still remain the more serious sports among cue sports, but pool and nine-ball too have emerged as popular options. More recently, Dharminder Singh qualified for the world championship for nine-ball and will be representing the country in the Guinness nine-ball tour along with the top players of the world.

Although the craze for pool and snooker joints has subsided, cue sports has seen a lot of interest among club members. "There was a myth surrounding cue sports that they were played by middle-aged people where fitness didn't play a crucial role," says Manisha Malhotra, administrator, Mittal Champion's Trust, which has taken a keen interest in developing cue sports on a large scale.

Pool, perhaps, is a wham-bam sport, where concentration levels required are less than, say, snooker, which demands exceptional concentration levels and the ability to think on one's feet. Billiards, on the other hand, requires mental endurance and cue discipline.

One of the main issues that had cropped up recently was when the Snooker and Billiards Federation of India suggested that players could play either of the sports "" a move that was not appreciated by many cueists.

The BSFI had then said that this was being done keeping the long-term interests of the players in mind for they could then focus on more than one particular event. But the likes of Advani, who has won a world title in both snooker and billiards, weren't too keen on the idea.

The BSFI is also keen on the idea of hiring foreign coaches for the game. The idea is to have coaches for national training camps and to help in identifying upcoming talent as well as improve the current lot.

But players feel that the authorities failed to cash in on the pool parlour boom of a few years ago. Former national snooker champion Yasin Merchant admits, "To a certain extent, we failed to cash in during that time and missed the opportunity to take the game to a different level when a large number of aspiring youngsters had taken up cue sports during the boom."

Although given the consistency with which Advani and Sethi have been performing, it did not affect the sport too much. Says an official from BSFI, "There are a lot of youngsters recently who are taking this sport seriously and we will see a lot of young people making a name for themselves in this sport in the not too distant future."

Coaching camps are organised regularly in cities like Bangalore and Pune to encourage more players. But, still, there is a feeling of not getting their due recognition.

This is probably because of the lack of support from the corporate world. But the future looks good with players like Sourav Kothari and Singh, who have it in them to emulate the standards set by Sethi, Wilson Jones, Michael Ferriera and, now, Advani.

With the talent and pedigree in the sport, maybe it's time we look at a sporting activity which has fewer shades of green but which has brought more accolades and glory to the nation.