The 'professional' hazards

To summarise, Pankaj Advani has won a lot, but the thing about being the greatest amateur snooker and billiards player of all time is the ‘amateur’ bit of it.

Pankaj Advani is a rather nice chap, but you can sense that a part of him is quietly embittered by how he’s treated. 

Advani is the greatest Indian cueist of all time. Period! But he also happens to be the greatest amateur snooker and billiards player of all time. 

In isolation, that sentence doesn’t sound bad at all. In fact, most would wish to get so far. Advani has 28 IBSF titles and only recently added an Asian snooker title to the four he had prior. Lest we forget the nine Asian billiards titles too. 

To summarise, Advani has won a lot, but the thing about being the greatest amateur snooker and billiards player of all time is the ‘amateur’ bit of it. 

Only recently, when a fan on social media asked Advani if there was anything he had not won yet, Advani said: “the heart of all Indian fans”.

…. and anything on the professional circuit. 

The fact that Advani even got the chance to play a couple of seasons on the professional tour is remarkable because only six people from India have ever gone there. 

Yasin Merchant, Advani, Aditya Mehta, Lucky Vatnani, Himanshu Jain and more recently Ishpreet Singh Chadha.

Why though? Why are Indians finding it hard to crack the professional code when they can so well dominate the amateur sphere?

“It’s all in the finances,” says Billiards and Snooker Federation of India president S Balasubramaniam. “Of course, there are other aspects to it such as staying in England, the weather, the cultural differences, and not to forget that the talent at that level is remarkable, but it really is about the money. 

“It’s really hard to fund yourself or find an investor to invest in you when you’re spending close to ten months there. There is also no guarantee that you will win so until then you keep spending money on travel, stay and so on. Which is why most of our players don’t stick around for too long.”

This lines up with what Advani said after surrendering his pro card after just a couple of years on the pro tour. “Playing over six months in England, there was no chance of playing billiards and I was missing my family as well. My sole objective is to excel in both billiards and snooker and it will only be possible if I am based in India,” he had said over a decade ago. 

A couple of players have emerged since, but none more promising than Ishpreet. Having grown up under Merchant’s wings, the Mumbai-based cueist got good in quick time, and upon defeating Advani in a 6-Red snooker tournament a while ago, he figured he’d get his act professional, and let go of his dream ESports dream.   

“It was one of the best decisions I’ve made to play Q School. It is such a wonderful feeling playing on the tour with all of the professionals, especially the top 16 ranked players. It is great playing at such a high level. I’m happy to be competing with these players and improving at the same time. It was one of the best decisions to just focus on snooker and move forward with that,” said Ishpreet when asked about giving up on professional Esports.  

After earning a two-year World Snooker Tour card for finishing on top in the Asia-Oceania Q School tournament, Ishpreet has defeated the likes of Stuart Bingham, Luca Brecel, Anthony McGill and four-time World Snooker champion Mark Selby. 

These are some of the biggest names in the sport and Ishpreet cut them to size, but this still doesn’t necessarily mean he will continue to expand his game on the pro circuit. The only thing which he has going for him, unlike others in the past, is that he was "born with a golden spoon”.

“I was born with a golden spoon, had everything on the platter and never had to work a single day in my life. But my fearlessness and hunger to win comes from my mum who played badminton herself. She’s a single mother, who raised me when my parents separated. As soon as dad was not in the picture, she dedicated her life to making me better at sport,” he says.

Lucky Ishpreet. What about the rest though? We guess they remain stationed in India and hope their escapades in cold, dark snooker halls get spoken of in small groups of enthusiasts.

There is a way to change that up, and Balasubramaniam has the blueprint to instigate this move. 

"We need to set up basic infrastructure, and we should be able to fund players to go abroad for training. It is expensive for our players to go there (United Kingdom) and train. To start with, we will try and organise foreign coaches to come down to India and train aspiring players,” he said. 

“We are also trying to revive the Indian Open, hopefully, we will be able to host it soon. Besides that, we will try and see if we can have more pro events happening in the country. Today, youngsters are taking up snooker in a big way and it is for us to see that we have more prize money tournaments. The federation will support the state bodies to conduct them.”

Balasubramaniam, seated in his office, has a lot on his plate, but he doesn’t seem too bothered by it. His mind is on the future, including the possibility of ‘Heyball’ as a revenue generator to further the status of snooker in the country, and isn’t too concerned.

Perhaps he knows something we don’t because the more you speak to the players the more they sound jaded about the state of the sport.

Snooker, billiards and pool have historically come with a negative cultural narrative and that’s another reason why Indians aren’t allowed to take to the sport, but the ones hooked on to it remain so because these halls inspire micro-communities and the game itself can be addictive. But, for that feeling to take hold, all the stake holders need to put in effort to reinvigorate the passion for the sport. 

Once there, going pro is only a matter of who wants it, how badly, and if they too have a golden spoon.