Nationals to kick off from tomorrow

Bengaluru, DHNS: The Senior National billiards and snooker championships return to the city after an 11-year hiatus, with the qualifying event set to kick off at the KSBA hall on Monday.

With both the men's and women's billiards and snooker events being held simultaneously -- like always -- the championships will conclude only on January 26 although a week in between will be taken to identify the 15 qualifiers for the main draw of the men's snooker event.

S Balasubramanian, the secretary of the Billiards and Snooker Federation of India, said a quota-based system is likely to be introduced from the next edition onwards to curb the number of entries that would make it logistically easier to stage it.

"We did discuss the issue of a huge number of people applying for the snooker nationals. Even for this championship, we've got 534 registrations. What we intend to do from next edition is introduce a quota-based system based on a State's merit. Basically, a state with a strong talent pool and history will get more spots as compared to a state with a weaker pool. This will increase the number of group stage participants but will definitely limit the huge number of entries we get."

Balasubramanian also said the experiment of staging the junior, sub-junior and senior championship will be put off from next year. "We split the juniors from the seniors for two reasons. Firstly, we thought we would get more number of entries for juniors. Secondly, we had it in December because January-February was close to the exams. But we didn't see any substantial hike in the number of entries. So we will go back to staging the national championship all together from the next edition onwards."

The men's billiards proper will take place from Jan 9-15 while the corresponding snooker event will be from Jan 21-26. The women's billiards is from Jan 20-23 and the snooker from Jan 23-26.