Born | India | 11 February 1965
---|---|
Sport country | India |
Revanna Umadevi Nagaraj (born 11 February 1965), is an Indian professional player of English billiards and snooker. [1] She is a World Women's Billiard champion (2012) [2] and a six-time Indian national Billiards champion. [3] She had defeated World No 13 Eva Palmius during the London 2012 Championship to become the World Champion. [4]
Umadevi was born in 1965. It was in the midst of her life, when Umadevi realised her potentials in Billiards. While working as a typist in Bangalore, she used to go to the Karnataka Government Secretariat Club to play table tennis. One day, while waiting for a long time for her turn for table tennis, she decided to move on to the Billiards table next to the table tennis room and gradually started loving the game. Post that, Umadevi never looked back but towards the path of glory with a cue stick on her hand, focussing only at the colourful balls on the green table top. Towards a successful sports career, she was mentored by prominent billiards players and coaches such as Shri. Arvind Savur, S. Jairaj, and M. G Jayaram. In 2012, Umadevi bagged the title of World Billiards Champion as well as the 8 Ball Pool National Champion. Umadevi is still giving her best efforts to top-notch the upcoming billiards events of international stage and planning to coach the burgeoning stars to shine in the respective sports niche after her retirement.
She was awarded Eklavaya Award in 2009 for her contribution to Billiards by the Government of Karnataka. She became the World Billiards Champion and 8 Ball Pool National Champion in 2012. She received Nari Shakti Puraskar from the President of India Ram Nath Kovind among the list of 30 great women achievers of 2017 in India. [5]
Outcome | No. | Year | Championship | Opponent | Score | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Winner | 1 | 2012 | World Women's Billiards Championship | Emma Bonney | 201–143 | [5] |
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.
Pankaj Arjan Advani is an Indian billiards and professional snooker player. He is a 25-time International Billiards and Snooker Federation (IBSF) world champion. He has won 17 billiards world titles, the IBSF World Billiards Championship on 16 occasions and the World Team Billiards Championship once. In snooker, he won the IBSF World Snooker Championship three times, IBSF World six-red championship twice and the IBSF World Team Cup and IBSF World Team Championship one time each. He has the record number of IBSF world championships. He became a snooker professional in 2012/2013.
Efren Manalang Reyes, popularly known by the nicknames "Bata" and "The Magician", is a Filipino professional pool player. Reyes is widely considered one of the greatest pool players of all time. In 2003 he was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame. A winner of over 100 international titles, Reyes was the first player to win the WPA World Championships in two different pool disciplines. Among his numerous titles, Reyes is a WPA World Nine-ball Champion and WPA World Eight-ball Champion, a U.S. Open 9-Ball Championship winner, a four-time Sands Regency 9-Ball Open winner, and a thirteen-time Derby City Classic winner. Reyes also represented the Philippines at the World Cup of Pool, winning the event with his partner Francisco Bustamante in 2006 and 2009. Reyes defeated American legend Earl Strickland in The Color of Money challenge match in 1996, in a winner-take-all prize of $100,000.
Nagaraj, Nagraj or Nagaraja or Nagarajan is a male Indian given name and Indian surname. It originates in the Sanskrit: नागराज nagaraja 'king of the nāgas'. It is especially prevalent in southern India and northeastern parts of India.
Jeanette Lee is a Korean-American professional pool player. She was nicknamed the Black Widow by her friends because, in spite of her sweet demeanor, she would "eat people alive" when she got to a pool table and always wear black when playing pool.
Lynette Horsburgh is a Scottish-English semi-professional, world champion pool and national champion snooker player, as well as an international-class player of English billiards. In sport, she represents Scotland. Outside sport, she is a professional Web content producer and journalist at BBC News Online.
Thorsten Hohmann is a German professional pool player, nicknamed "the Hitman." He is a three-time world champion, winning the WPA World Nine-ball Championship in 2003, and 2013, and winning the WPA World Straight Pool Championship in 2006.
Dennis Orcollo, sometimes called Dennis Orcullo, is a Filipino professional pool player, nicknamed "Surigao" and "RoboCop". He has been called "The Money-Game King".
Jasmin Ouschan is an Austrian professional pool player from Klagenfurt, Carinthia. Her first professional competition occurred in 2002, but she did not officially become a professional member of the Women's Professional Billiards Association (WPBA) until 2007. She is currently one of the top-ranked women in the world according to the 2010 prize money list and by the WPBA rankings. At times, she has been ranked as the number one female player in the world. Since 2006, she has been listed among the top-ten women in the annual prize money rankings. Ouschan competes regularly with men on the Euro Tour and in 2008 became the first woman to earn a medal in an open world pool championship.
Cricket is by far the most popular sport in Karnataka with International cricket matches attracting a sizeable number of spectators who are willing to pay more than the standard ticket price to get a chance to watch the match. The sports related infrastructure is mainly concentrated in Bangalore which also played host to the 4th National Games of India in the year 1997. Bangalore is also the location of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) which is the premier sports institute in the country. Karnataka is sometimes referred to as the cradle of Indian swimming because of high standards in swimming compared to other states.
Sport is a significant part of life in India. The country has a very long sports history, with sports being a part of tradition, culture, finance and entertainment. People in India closely follow various sports and enthusiastically participate in them. Cricket is the most popular spectator sport in the country, and citizens often play it as a recreational activity; it generates the highest television viewership, and features full-capacity audiences in stadiums during international and Indian Premier League (IPL) matches. It is part of popular culture. However, in more recent decades, football has also become another popular sport in terms of broadcast viewership and stadium audience attendance. Kabaddi has grown into the mainstream, and so have badminton, tennis and athletics. Kho-kho has grown into becoming the fourth-most viewed sport in the country. India has also had considerable success in field hockey. India has won the World Cup and multiple medals in field hockey in the Olympic Games. During that time, Major Dhyan Chand was a notable player. Sports such as swimming and badminton are played as recreational activities and for exercise. India does not have a national game.
Emma Bonney is an English world champion player of English billiards, and snooker player. She has won the women's world billiards title a record thirteen times.
Arantxa Sanchis is a female professional English billiards and snooker player from India. She won a gold medal in the Women's Team event at the inaugural IBSF World 6-Red Snooker and Team Snooker Championship in Carlow, Ireland, on 6 October 2013. It was a historic first gold medal for Indian women's snooker at a World Championship. On 27 September 2015, she won the inaugural IBSF World Billiards Championship in Adelaide, Australia. This feat made her the only woman in the world to hold IBSF World titles in both billiards and snooker.
Chitra Magimairaj, is an Indian professional player of snooker, English billiards, and pool. She is a two-time World Ladies Billiards and Snooker Association World Champion, a two-time national pool champion, and more recently the World Women's Senior Snooker Championship (2014). She has also been a national-class amateur cricket and field hockey player.
Vidya Viswanathan Pillai is an Indian professional snooker player. Vidya Pillai grew up in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. In recognition of her achievements, the Government of Karnataka bestowed her with the Ekalavya award in 2016 for outstanding performance in Sports. She has won several International medals for India and in 2013 won the gold medal in the IBSF World Team Snooker Championship, Gold in the IBSF Australian Women's Ranking Snooker Championship in 2016 and was the first Indian woman to reach the finals of the WLBSA World Women's Snooker Championship in 2017. She is also a 9-time winner of the National Championship Title.
Chen Siming is a Chinese professional pool player. Chen is best known for winning the 2017 WPA World Nine-ball Championship.
Amee Kamani is an Indian snooker player. She was runner-up in the 2016 International Billiards and Snooker Federation World Snooker championship, losing 0–5 in the final to the defending champion Wendy Jans. Kamani was the 2018 Asian Billiards Sports Championships Ladies Champion after defeating Siripaporn Nuanthakhamjan 3–0 in the final, and was runner-up at the 2014 Australian Open and the 2019 International Billiards and Snooker Federation Women's six-reds snooker championship.
The World Women's Billiards Championship is an English billiards tournament, first held in 1931 when organised by the cue sports company Burroughes and Watts then run from 1932 by the Women's Billiards Association (WBA). It is currently run under the auspices of World Billiards Ltd (WBL), a subsidiary company of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association.
Anna Lynch is an English billiards and snooker player from Australia who won the World Women's Billiards Championship in 2019. She is also a professional jazz pianist.