Coming out of the convulsions

Despite the demise of billiards looking imminent,the sport has managed to survive and now could well be bursting with renewed vigour,writes MICHAEL FERREIRA

WITH ALL the excitement of Sydney 2000 and the cricket scandal before that, writing about billiards has seemed for quite some time, to be a trifle tame. The Olympics, bronze medal and all, are now firmly behind us, and the cricket scandal is taking a breather before the official match-fixing report rips the nation apart once again.

With some major billiards events on the horizon, it seems an appropriate time to return to my roots.

The noble three ball game has been going through something of a convulsion in recent times. I have been hearing of the imminent demise of billiards ever since I can remember. My introduction to the great John Spencer, twice world snooker champion and former Chairman of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, was in London during the 1969 world amateur billiards championship. He looked at me pityingly and placed a friendly arm around my shoulders. ``Billiards is dead, Michael'' said he. ``Why don't you think about giving it up''. Quite a morale- boosting remark to a young billiards player with stars in his eyes!

Spencer was a wonderful snooker player but I would struggle to place him in the ranks of those whose gifts of mind and heart extend beyond the confines of a billiards table. I did not listen to him, of course, and went on to finish runner-up and score what was then a world record break of 629. But that is hardly the point. What is important is that the genteel lady that is the mother of cue sports is still surviving and, by the looks of it, could well be bursting with renewed vigour.

The subtle delights of billiards and the hidden artistry of those who play at the highest level do not have the same immediate impact as the more earthy games of snooker or pool. I do not propose to enter into an argument as to which game is easier to play (although by common consent pool is really a poor cousin of billiards and snooker in the skills department). However, there is no doubt that snooker and pool are conceptually much easier for the layman to follow. When you throw in the fact that each frame or rack has an obvious finishing line, is short and sharp and has the advantage of being an end in itself, both games have a spectator-friendly edge over billiards, unless of course, the viewer is a connoisseur.

The explosion of TV and the millions of dollars that drive it has changed the face of sport forever. No longer can billiards and so- called lesser sports such as squash and table tennis, chug along content with their lot. Squash brought in glass walls and now will introduce bigger balls that not only facilitate TV viewing but also reduce what appears to the average viewer to be a monotonous exchange of strokes without much happening. I understand that TV imperatives also have fuelled a demand for a different table tennis ball in addition to changes in rules to make the game easier to watch.

As far as billiards is concerned, the World Professional Billiards Committee had, over the years, tried different formats to make the game more attractive. The two week matches - yes, you did not read that wrong - which were played by the golden professionals of yesteryear were, over a period of time, reduced to eight hour matches played over two days. From the 60s till the late 1980s it was decided that four-hour matches were a fair test of who was the best player in a tournament, and the four-hour match came to be accepted as the standard for both the amateur and the newly resurrected professional game.

But in the U.K., with snooker now in its best phase, the Committee took the view that something radical still needed to be done to satisfy the British public who were accustomed to the crash-bang-wallop of the 22 ball game. This led to the birth of the 150-point format which, while horrifying the purists, had something of the sharpness of snooker to compensate for the absence of big breaks, which is what billiards is all about. A series of 150-up tournaments in the 1990s, with India as the prime venue, gave the game a much-needed boost. However, the world championship continued to be in the four-hour format which was still considered to be the ``real'' game. Shades of Test cricket v the one-dayers!

The inclusion of cue-sports in the 1998 Asian Games gave billiards an unexpected platform for expansion. In April this year, Sindhu Pulsirivong, the Chairman of the Thailand Snooker Association, and the driving force behind the inclusion of cue- sports in Bangkok, gave the WPBSA a proposal for holding the World Open Billiards Championship in Bangkok with copious TV exposure and reasonable prize money. The fact that that money was largely drawn from the WPBSA billiards budget was incidental to him, though the Committee as a whole found that hard to swallow, as it meant forgoing a couple of professional events. The only drawback was that he insisted that the tournament should be over an appropriate number of games of only 50 points up. Sindhu was convinced that billiards would greatly benefit from what he perceived to be a very exciting format.

As one of the traditionalists in the Billiards Committee, I was frankly appalled at the prospect of 500 break players being reduced to the indignity of playing in 50-point games. A shocked Terry Griffiths, former world snooker champion and now Director of Coaching at the WPBSA, said to me, ``This is absurd. It's like a snooker frame being decided on who gets the first long pot''.

Sindhu's proposal fell through for reasons that are not relevant to this article, but the 50-point seed had been sowed in the minds of the Committee. I personally had, and still have, reservations as to whether the format would spread the message of the game in the manner that was intended. But the idea of the World Open was re-opened by the IBSF, the governing body of the amateur game. With financial help from the WPBSA, this championship, featuring the best players in the world, will be held soon after this piece appears in print.

Indeed the 50-point bug has bitten the English members of the Committee so hard that the U.K. Professional and the World Professional Championships will be held in this format. My own reservations notwithstanding, I must admit that the recent All- India Invitational Billiards Championship which was held in the 50-point format at TheHindu Gymkhana was an unqualified success. Devendra Joshi won the title beating double Asian gold medallist Ashok Shandilya 11-10 in the final.

Interestingly, it was standing room only for the final, and this on a day when India was playing Sri Lanka in Sharjah! Though there were a couple of upsets - world No. 8 Nalin Patel lost in the quarter-finals and former world champion Manoj Kothari failed to qualify for the knockout stage - the better players still had the advantage. As world champion Mike Russell put it, ``This format is still about scoring points''. So, 50-point format or not, if anyone expects the fair-haired Englishman to surrender his U.K. and World crowns in a hurry, he had better think again! So does it look like we have at last found a universally acceptable format? Only time will tell.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Sport
Next     : Kramnik, the new king