New IBSF chief Mohan plans to start Asian Tour

Billiards and Snooker Federation of India president Capt PVK Mohan, who was on Wednesday elected chief of the International Billiards and Snooker Federation (IBSF), said the international body planned to start an Asian Tour in an attempt to promote the game.

Excerpts from a media interaction:
On his plans: We have a lot of plans and I would like to get an Asian tour started, like you have the European tour for professional snooker players. They have several PTC tournaments. But I would like to start that in Asia and I already have requests from three or four countries. I’ve spoken to the WPBSA and they have said that 5-6 countries would be ideal. India would be one of course. Then probably look at Singapore, one country in the middle-east, Qatar or UAE, Thailand, may be Hong Kong. The other thing I would like to do is increase the membership of the IBSF. It presently has 85 countries. A few of them are suspended for a variety of reasons. I would like to revive all those countries and bring them back to the IBSF fold and new countries to be brought in. Ideally, we should take the figure to beyond 100.

On getting cue sports back to Asian Games: That is a top priority for me. I’ve already spoken to Olympic Council of Asia chief (Sheikh Fahad Al-Sabah) in Kuwait. The next Asian Games is in Indonesia and we at IBSF have decided to hold a meeting with OCA and make a strong pitch for cue sports to be included again in the Asian Games. If we achieve that, we will be able to work on cue sports getting the Commonwealth Games nod.

Thoughts on conducting a league: IMG will start working on that next month. We plan to launch the event in first quarter of next year. The event will happen in India with participation from foreign players.