When one mentions cue sports in India, the first, and perhaps the only in some cases, contemporary name that comes to mind is Pankaj Advani.
But as he was winning his ninth men’s national crown last month, 22-year-old Varsha Sanjeev won a hard-fought women’s national title beating the experienced duo of Amee Kamani in the quarter-finals and Vidya Pillai in the semis.
Both Kamani and Pillai have been performing well for India for a while, making the youngster’s win even more remarkable. The women’s game in India has not had a flagberaer like Advani or Aditya Mehta, but according to the national champion, the competitors are finally growing and the number of competitions need to match up.
“I have been playing for nine years now, I started with juniors and sub juniors and back then, there wasn’t a lot of competition. But right now there is a lot of competition in juniors, with around 25 girls who really play at a good level..” Varsha told Scroll.in on the sidelines of a snooker tournament in Mumbai.
“In junior, there are a lot of people coming into the sport as well. One of them [Keerthana Pandian] is the World Under-16 champion as well. When I was a junior player, I would have to compete with seniors only because there weren’t many competitions for juniors. But now it has changed,” she added.
The process of expanding the tournaments for the pool of women’s players, not just in India but the world, has been slow and recent. But the results are showing.
“When I started playing, there wasn’t an Under-21 or Under-18 category. Now they have Under-16 as well at the World Championship level. Say six-seven years back, there was just one World Championship. Now we have Asian, World 6 Red, the World Team Championship, the individual 15 red so we have many world championships as well so that is why we have so many players coming up,” she added.
However, there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of the number of competitions for women. Vasrha herself plays both snooker and billiards but gets to play more snooker because there are more competitions.
“At the international level, obviously men have more events, the Asian Tour and all that. I think they are trying to get it to the women’s tour as well.
“In India, we don’t have our own individual event like a standalone event. We probably have just two events for women in a year, one would be nationals and one would be a prize money event. The other private events depends on the sponsor.
“But a lot of club tournaments are mixed so both men and women compete in the same event,” she explained.
The 22-year-old competed in the CCI All India Open snooker in Mumbai – only her second open tournament – and lost to Vimal Mariwala. Two other women, Sangeeta Hemchand (CCI), Aratxa Sanchis (Pune), played with the men at the Mumbai competition.
The other option for women cueists are private events all over the world where the top Indian players can participate with the approval of the federation. “There are certain events, like the World Ladies Snooker Championship, Belgian Open, UK Championship, Australian Open. They give the same amount of money as a World Championship. When I get time, I do go play these events.
“The level of competition (in these tournaments) is much different, all the world champions come there, the prize money is good and you also get ranking points. This is maintained separately by the World Snooker and Billiards Federation WLBSA,” she added.
But despite the lack of competition, Varsha believe that the profile of snooker and billiards in India has risen significantly in India. She explained how the competitions have led to more coaching being accessible and players taking up cue sports professionally. As there are no separate selection trials, players get to represent India if they qualify at the national level.
“It has increased because of the India Open. Pankaj being there, raising the flag high, Adiya Mehta as well. Most of the players have been looking up to them. For the past three or more years Amee Kamani has been dominating in India among women. She won the Asian title last year and she is doing well at the World Championship as well. A lot of youngsters look up to her now. She plays in Indore so a lot of girls from Indore have started playing as well,” the youngster said.
Varsha herself started playing the sport when she saw world champion Advani play in her hometown.
“I started when I was in Standard 6. I saw Pankaj play at the World Billiards Championship which was happening in Bangalore. And I just wanted to see and thought I should try it. When I did, I realised I was very good at it and that is how it started. I went directly to where Pankaj plays, the Karnataka State Billiards Association. I got my membership done and started training there and had a really good coach. My first coach was MG Jayaram and right now Sanjay Sawant is training me. Now, we have a huge facility and a lot more tables in Bangalore and a lot of participation,” she recounted.
However, for now the increase talent pool needs to translate into increase of standalone competitions for women’s cue sports to gain more backing.
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