New format for snooker in the offing

By Narendra Bhale

Indore : Vijay Goel, Vice President, BSFI advocated a new format of Snooker the inaugural Ceremony of Baba Billiards Academy.
Invented in India way back in the year 1975 at Jabalpur Snooker has under gone many changes in the last over hundred and forty years, from Balls to Tables and scoring pattern.
Goel Emphasized that sports should be viewer friendly, must have some suspense and less time consuming to make it more popular and this is our objective

This Twenty Red ball Snooker tournament was held in exhibition matches recently and was very popular.
Ravi Tandon , Secretary, DBSA, also stressed the need to cut short the duration of the match by adding five more red balls and by making it best of three frames, as he said that best of nine frames match consume more than five hours to finish and best of three will finish in two hours and it will be more difficult for the players to make a break of 187 rather than 147 and the opponent will get a chance rather than sitting like a mute spectator
Vijay Goel, himself a player and having represented Indian in the Asian Games twice, said that it is just at the initial stage like in 1972, Kerry Packer started one day format in Cricket, no body could imagine that it would become so popular
Players were very much hopeful that this format will see the light of the day officially in the times to come, as in 2030 Asian Games, Cue sports has been included in the Competitive Discipline of Sports. One Exhibition match of 20 Red Ball was played between Delhi players Jaison Malhotra and V Sharma.
Manmeet Bhatia, Tournament Director, RKG Snooker was very optimistic of the popularity of this format.