Cue sports in India

Last updated

Governing body Billiards and Snooker Federation of India
First playedDecember 1881 [1]

Cue sports have a long history in India. The game of snooker originated among British Army officers stationed in India in the latter half of the 19th century.

Contents

Billiard champions like Wilson Jones, Michael Ferreira, and Geet Sethi have come out of India. Pankaj Advani is another successful Indian player. Training camps for identifying talent and providing them regional and state sponsorship have been organised by the Billiards and Snooker Federation in various parts of the country.

History

The origin of snooker dates back to the latter half of the 19th century. [2] In the 1870s, billiards was a popular activity amongst British Army officers stationed in India and several variations of the game were devised during this time. One such variation originated at the officers' mess of the 11th Devonshire Regiment in 1875, [3] which combined the rules of two pocket billiards games, pyramid and black pool. The former was played with fifteen red balls positioned in a triangle, while the latter involved the potting of designated coloured balls. [4] :50 The game developed [5] its own identity in 1884 when its first set of rules was finalised by Sir Neville Chamberlain, an English officer who helped develop and popularise the game at Stone House in Ooty on a table built by Burroughes & Watts that was brought over by boat. [6] The word "snooker" was a slang term for first-year cadets and inexperienced military personnel, but Chamberlain would often use it to describe the inept performance of one of his fellow officers at the table. The name instantly stuck with the players. [2]

The earliest contemporary reference to cue sports in India appears in a letter written by Captain Sheldrick from Calcutta on 2 February 1886. The letter gives a detailed account of a game called "Snookers". The letter also contains references to the game being played among members of the British Indian Army in 1884. British officer Ian Hamilton, who was stationed in Ooty from 1882–84, wrote a letter in 1938 in which he noted, "I have never doubted that my old friend Sir Neville Chamberlain invented the game of Snooker. I was in at Ootacamund in 1882-84 and there still must be some crowd left who can testify to the belief their current that Snooker owed its birth to Neville Chamberlain fertile brain. Could the game have existed in Ooty even before Chamberlain arrival just waiting for him to discover it and give it a new name. This is a certainly a possibility." The Billiards and Snooker Federation of India (BFSI) states that Ooty is "the most credible birthplace for the game of Snooker", however, the federation rejects the theory that the game was already established in Ooty. The BSFI also states that, based on available evidence, the first snooker game in India occurred at Ooty "almost precisely" in December 1881. [1]

Total medals won by Indian's in Cue Sports in Major tournaments

CompetitionGoldSilverBronzeTotal
Asian Games 54615
Total54615

Performance by Players in Billiards Tournaments

TournamentNameWinnerRunner-up
World Billiards Championship Pankaj Advani 153
World Billiards Championship Geet Sethi 34
World Billiards Championship Michael Ferreira 32
World Billiards Championship Chitra Magimairaj 22
World Billiards Championship Wilson Jones 21
World Billiards Championship Ashok Shandilya 14
World Billiards Championship R Umadevi Nagaraj 13
World Billiards Championship Manoj Kothari 10
World Billiards Championship Rupesh Shah 10
World Billiards Championship Anuja Thakur 10
World Billiards Championship Devendra Joshi 02
World Billiards Championship Sourav Kothari 02
World Billiards Championship Satish Mohan 01
World Billiards Championship Dhruv Sitwala 01
World Billiards Championship Alok Kumar 01
World Billiards Championship Bhaskar Balachandra 01

Performance by Players in Snooker Tournaments

TournamentNameWinnerRunner-up
World Snooker Championship Pankaj Advani 31
World Snooker Championship Omprakesh Agrawal 10
World Snooker Championship Amee Kamani 01
World Snooker Championship Vidya Pillai 01

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cue sports</span> Table games using cues and billiard balls

Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as cushions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eight-ball</span> Pool game popular in much of the world

Eight-ball is a discipline of pool played on a billiard table with six pockets, cue sticks, and sixteen billiard balls. The object balls include seven solid-colored balls numbered 1 through 7, seven striped balls numbered 9 through 15, and the black 8 ball. After the balls are scattered with a break shot, a player is assigned either the group of solid or striped balls once they have legally pocketed a ball from that group. The object of the game is to legally pocket the 8-ball in a "called" pocket, which can only be done after all of the balls from a player's assigned group have been cleared from the table.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nine-ball</span> Type of cue sport

Nine-ball is a discipline of the cue sport pool. The game's origins are traceable to the 1920s in the United States. It is played on a rectangular billiard table with pockets at each of the four corners and in the middle of each long side. Using a cue stick, players must strike the white cue ball to pocket nine colored billiard balls, hitting them in ascending numerical order. An individual game is won by the player pocketing the 9-ball. Matches are usually played as a race to a set number of racks, with the player who reaches the set number winning the match.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Snooker</span> Cue sport

Snooker is a cue sport played on a rectangular billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six pockets, one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. First played by British Army officers stationed in India in the second half of the 19th century, the game is played with twenty-two balls, comprising a white cue ball, fifteen red balls, and six other balls—a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and black—collectively called the colours. Using a cue stick, the individual players or teams take turns to strike the cue ball to pot other balls in a predefined sequence, accumulating points for each successful pot and for each time the opposing player or team commits a foul. An individual frame of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points. A snooker match ends when a player reaches a predetermined number of frames.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English billiards</span> Cue sport combining the disciples of carom and pocket billiards

English billiards, called simply billiards in the United Kingdom and in many former British colonies, is a cue sport that combines the aspects of carom billiards and pool. Two cue balls and a red object ball are used. Each player or team uses a different cue ball. It is played on a billiards table with the same dimensions as one used for snooker and points are scored for cannons and pocketing the balls.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Straight pool</span> Cue sport

Straight pool, which is also called 14.1 continuous and 14.1 rack, is a cue sport in which two competing players attempt to pot as many billiard balls as possible without playing a foul. The game was the primary version of pool played in professional competition until it was superseded by faster-playing games like nine-ball and eight-ball in the 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Billiard ball</span> Ball used in cue sports

A billiard ball is a small, hard ball used in cue sports, such as carom billiards, pool, and snooker. The number, type, diameter, color, and pattern of the balls differ depending upon the specific game being played. Various particular ball properties such as hardness, friction coefficient, and resilience are important to accuracy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russian pyramid</span> Form of pocket billiards popular in Eastern Europe

Russian pyramid, also known as Russian billiards, is a form of billiards played on a large billiard table with narrow pockets. It is popular across Eastern Europe as well as countries of the former Soviet Union/Eastern Bloc. In Western countries, the game is known as pyramid billiards, or simply pyramid within professional circles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Billiard table</span> Bounded table on which cue sports are played

A billiard table or billiards table is a bounded table on which cue sports are played. In the modern era, all billiards tables provide a flat surface usually made of quarried slate, that is covered with cloth, and surrounded by vulcanized rubber cushions, with the whole thing elevated above the floor. More specific terms are used for specific sports, such as snooker table and pool table, and different-sized billiard balls are used on these table types. An obsolete term is billiard board, used in the 16th and 17th centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pool (cue sports)</span> Family of cue sports

Pool is a classification of cue sports played on a table with six pockets along the rails, into which balls are deposited. Each specific pool game has its own name; some of the better-known include eight-ball, blackball, nine-ball, ten-ball, seven-ball, straight pool, one-pocket, and bank pool. Eight-ball is the most frequently played discipline of pool, and is often thought of as synonymous with "pool".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Four-ball billiards</span> Carom billiards game played in variations around the world

Four-ball billiards or four-ball carom is a carom billiards game, played on a pocketless table with four billiard balls, usually two red and two white, one of the latter with a spot to distinguish it. Each player is assigned one of the white balls as a cue ball. A point is scored when a shooter's cue ball caroms on any two other balls in the same shot. Two points are scored when the shooter caroms on each of the three object balls in a single shot. A carom on only one ball results in no points, and ends the shooter's inning.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rack (billiards)</span>

A rack is a piece of equipment that is used to place billiard balls in their starting positions at the beginning of a pocket billiards game. Rack may also be used as a verb to describe the act of setting billiard balls in their starting positions, or as a noun to describe a set of balls that are in their starting positions.

The following is a glossary of traditional English-language terms used in the three overarching cue sports disciplines: carom billiards referring to the various carom games played on a billiard table without pockets; pool, which denotes a host of games played on a table with six pockets; and snooker, played on a large pocket table, and which has a sport culture unto itself distinct from pool. There are also games such as English billiards that include aspects of multiple disciplines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neville Chamberlain (police officer)</span> Inventor of snooker

Sir Neville Francis Fitzgerald Chamberlain, was an officer in the British Indian Army. He was later Inspector-General of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and resigned in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. He is credited with having invented the game of snooker while serving in Jubbulpore (Jabalpur), India, in 1875.

Cowboy pool is a hybrid pool game combining elements of English billiards through an intermediary game, with more standard pocket billiards characteristics. The game employs four balls, the cue ball and three others, numbered one, three, and five. A game of Cowboy pool is contested as a race to 101 points, with those points being awarded for a host of different shot types. Dating back to 1908, the game is a strictly amateur pastime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blackball (pool)</span> Pool game

Blackball pool, also known as English pool, English eight-ball or simply reds and yellows, is a pool game originating in the United Kingdom and popularized across Europe and The Commonwealth, such as Australia and South Africa. In the UK and Ireland it is usually called simply "pool". The game is played with sixteen balls on a small pool table with six pockets.

Carom billiards and pool are two types of cue sports or billiards-family games, which as a general class are played with a stick called a cue which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiard table bounded by rubber cushions attached to the confining rails of the table.

American snooker is a cue sport played almost exclusively in the United States, and strictly on a recreational, amateur basis. Diverging from the original game of snooker, rules for American snooker date back to at least 1925, and have been promulgated by the Billiard Congress of America (BCA) since the mid-20th century. The game is in decline, as the standardized international rules have largely supplanted it.

Slosh is a cue sport played on a snooker table. The game features seven balls, coloured white, yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black, with points being scored for pocketing or playing caroms and cannons off object balls. The game is played to a score of 100 points, or a length of 30 minutes. First played in the early 1900s, not much is known about the game's origins.

References

  1. 1 2 "BIRTH PLACE OF SNOOKER". Billiards and Snooker Federation of India. Retrieved 19 July 2018.
  2. 1 2 Maume, Chris (25 April 1999). "Sporting Vernacular 11. Snooker". The Independent. Archived from the original on 11 February 2017. Retrieved 25 February 2007.
  3. Clare, Peter (2008). "Origins of Snooker". Snooker Heritage. Archived from the original on 3 January 2017. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  4. Shamos, Mike (1994). Pool . New York City: Friedman Fairfax.
  5. "Mostbet in India". Mostbet in India. Retrieved 17 April 2023.
  6. Hughes-Games, Martin (16 June 2014). "Ooty, India: back in time to the birthplace of snooker". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 21 March 2017. Retrieved 8 February 2017.