We have all played board games and car­rom is one of the most pop­u­lar of them played in any house­hold or gath­er­ing. The game, played with 19 coins or carrom men including the red queen and one strik­er to hit the coins with and push them in any of the four pock­ets is played on boards of all sizes. They all just have to be square in shape with four holes, or pock­ets as they call them, at each cor­ner.

Carrom Kahani by Murtaza K. Zulfee

“There used to be a big car­rom board in our school can­teen and we would fight for our turn to play the game there. The can­teen of­fered ter­ri­ble food but it made good sales as the kids at­trac­ted to the game would al­so buy some­thing or the oth­er,” says Adil Akram, an am­a­teur play­er.

“We would all chip in to buy bor­ic pow­der for the board. Some kids al­so brought tal­cum pow­der to keep it slip­pery for the coins to move about with ease. I even bunked classes to play car­rom. I was a great play­er and knew I could be­come world cham­pion had there been any such cham­pion­ship,” the mid­dle-aged gen­tle­man laughs at the mem­o­ry. “And now I hear there ac­tual­ly are car­rom cham­pion­ships!”

What many may not know is that there is a Pakistan Carrom Federation (PCF) as well, which is do­ing a lot of work for the pro­mo­tion of the game here. “Affiliated with the International Carrom Federation, the Pakistan chap­ter was es­tab­lish­ed in 2004. The fol­low­ing year, Pakistan par­tici­pa­ted in the Saarc and the in­au­gu­ral Asian Carrom Championship in Male, Maldives. Both events of three days du­ra­tion each were held with a day’s gap in be­tween,” says Murtaza Khan Zulfee, sec­re­ta­ry gen­er­al of the Pakistan Carrom Federation and one of the five vice pres­i­dents of the International Carrom Federation.

“Although we do get spon­sors oc­ca­sion­al­ly, the trips in the be­gin­ning and most of the time even now were all self-fi­nanced by the Pakistan Carrom Federation. Still the lack of funds hasn’t dis­cour­aged us from par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly,” he adds.

“Besides the Carrom World Cup, the Asian Carrom Championship and the Saarc Carrom Championship, there is the European Carrom Championship, the Swiss League, French Open and Malaysian Open, too. Countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives, Bhutan, Nepal, Iran, Afghanistan, UK, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Australia, US, Canada, Japan and North Korea are reg­u­lar in many of these com­pet­i­tions. All in all there are 40 coun­tries par­tic­i­pat­ing in the events and since 2005, Pakistan is one of them,” he points out.

(L-R) Pakistan contingent of captain Murtaza K. Zulfee, Ramzan Ali, Shafique Ahmed, Saad Bin Murtaza and M. Suleman with president International Carrom Federation Arif Naqvi and General Secretary S.K. Sharma in the middle

The com­pet­i­tions in­clude men’s sin­gles, men’s dou­bles, team events, mixed dou­bles (one male play­er, one fe­male play­er) and wom­en’s events in the same cat­e­go­ries.

On the top­ic of in­ter­na­tion­al com­pet­i­tions, Zulfee says that a coun­try’s world rank­ing de­pends on the num­ber of com­pet­i­tions it par­tic­i­pates in. “The ex­po­sure, too, makes you bet­ter. Like India, right now is World No 1 and Sri Lanka World No 2. The two coun­tries have been play­ing bi­lat­er­al ser­ies since 1958. Pakistan is the new kid on the block, real­ly, but we have al­ways been no­ticed one way or the oth­er in all our in­ter­na­tion­al ap­pear­an­ces,” he says with pride.

The Pakistan car­rom team beat the vis­it­ing Czech Republic team by 2-0 in the three test ser­ies played here in 2013 and be­fore that in 2009, the green team beat Malaysia in Malaysia and the Nepal team in India in 2007.

“Initially, our team was not so great. To come up in the ranks we nee­ded to know the in­ter­na­tion­al laws of the game and we weren’t even get­ting new good play­ers as no one knew the rules. That posed a slight chal­lenge as the book of rules and reg­u­la­tions was dif­fi­cult to fol­low be­cause it wasn’t writ­ten in Urdu for the general public to understand af­ter all,” Zulfee points out.

“Therefore I trans­la­ted the laws and pub­lish­ed them in the form of books,” he says. “My book Carrom Kahani was real­ly ap­pre­ci­ated by the International Carrom Federation pres­i­dent, Mr Arif Naqvi. This was around the time of the Carrom World Cup in 2006 and Mr Naqvi, who is orig­i­nal­ly Indian but lives in Germany for the past 20 years now, liked it so much that he put it on ex­hi­bi­tion there,” Zulfee smiles.

“In fact I al­ways try to get Pakistan a men­tion one way or the oth­er in all in­ter­na­tion­al car­rom events. In 2008, dur­ing the 50th an­ni­ver­sa­ry of the Carrom Federation of Sri Lanka, we got a spe­cial men­tion, a spe­cial award and a stand­ing ova­tion af­ter Pakistan was able to show up in the event de­spite me, the team cap­tain, be­ing in­jured. Twelve days be­fore go­ing I was in an ac­ci­dent in which I broke some sev­en bones in my nose. But I nee­ded to be in Sri Lanka as, be­sides be­ing the team cap­tain, I al­so had to at­tend the an­nu­al meet­ing of in­ter­na­tion­al mem­bers as the sec­re­ta­ry gen­er­al of our fed­er­a­tion. That year, we made news by my just be­ing there with a ban­dag­ed nose,” he laughs.

This year, Pakistan will par­tic­i­pate in the Carrom World Cup to be held in Maldives in September. This would be fol­lowed by the Saarc Carrom Championship but it is still not clear where the Saarc event will take place. Zulfee says, “India is keen on hold­ing the cham­pion­ship but the Asian Carrom Confederation is con­cerned about vi­sa is­sues. There are al­ready few coun­tries in Saarc with Iran and Afghanistan, too, not there and the president of the Asian Carrom Confederation Mr Langley Mathiasz is con­cerned that Pakistan may al­so have to for­go the event due to vi­sa re­stric­tions from India. They will award India the hold­ing of event rights on­ly if they can guar­an­tee that the Pakistan team will be is­sued the vi­sas in time.

“The oth­er op­tion for hosts is Pakistan itself but Mr Langley thinks that if se­cur­i­ty here is an is­sue with the oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries then Pakistan can al­ways host the cham­pion­ship in Sri Lanka. They will pro­vide us the space though fund­ing and spon­sors will be ar­ranged by us. Still, all this is in the in­i­tial stages of dis­cus­sion right now,” he says.

Carrom vs Dubbo

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It might just be a dif­fer­ence of stand­ing up and sit­ting down, but the de­vi­a­tion cre­ates an al­to­geth­er dif­fer­ent game: car­rom is played sit­ting down while Dubbo can be played stand­ing up.

Though both games are played on square-sha­ped boards, the Dubbo board can be any­thing from 6x6ft to 12x12ft in size. The car­rom board, how­ev­er, is 73.50cm and at the most 74cm on all sides with the thick­ness of the board be­ing 8mm.

In car­rom, the stand of the board should be be­tween 63cm to 70cm in height, while the stools the play­ers sit on should be 40cm to 50cm in height, and no more.

Carrom rules al­so re­quire an over­head lamp with a 60 to 100watts bulb to keep the board warm for the pieces or car­rom men to move about smooth­ly with the help of bor­ic pow­der. Dubbo, on the oth­er hand, can be played in any kind of light. Dubbo al­so al­lows play­ers to use chem­i­cals be­sides bor­ic pow­der, both for aid­ing the pieces to move and to in­crea­ses the game's speed.

Also the car­rom men in the game, if abid­ing by in­ter­na­tion­al rules, are made of wood and 3.02 to 3.18cm in di­am­e­ter with the thick­ness be­ing not more than 0.70 to 0.90cm. The strik­er, mean­while, can be made of plas­tic or ivo­ry and is 4.13cm max­i­mum in di­am­e­ter. The strik­er in Dubbo can be as big as 4 inches in di­am­e­ter.

International car­rom is played on­ly with the in­dex fin­ger, mid­dle fin­ger or thumb, which one can use at one time or dur­ing one's turn but in Dubbo one can play with all fin­gers with no reg­u­la­tion on the num­ber of fin­gers used in a turn. That, by the way, is con­sid­ered foul in in­ter­na­tion­al car­rom, with the bring­ing out of one of your pot­ted car­rom men as pen­al­ty. — S.H.

No long nails for Asma

Asma Nisar

“Your fin­ger nails must be clip­ped in or­der to prove your fin­ger fit­ness for a game of car­rom,” says Asma Nisar, mem­ber of Pakistan wom­en’s car­rom team.

A pre-med­i­cal stu­dent, Asma says that she used to en­joy the cas­u­al car­rom games they played at home but “Playing by the rules is some­thing dif­fer­ent. Not fol­low­ing the rules and reg­u­la­tions of the game means dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion,” she says.

“Like at home, the strik­er would be much big­ger than the coins, pieces or car­rom men, as they call them. But ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al rules the strik­er must be on­ly slight­ly big­ger than the car­rom men,” she points out.

About how she be­came a pro­fes­sio­nal play­er of the game, Asma says, “Our col­lege, the Government College for Women Shahrah-i-Liaquat, re­ceived an in­vi­ta­tion to send a team to play in a col­lege cham­pion­ship or­gan­ised by the Pakistan Carrom Federation. I got se­lec­ted for the col­lege team tak­ing part in the event and one thing led to an­oth­er.”

When asked if she has al­so tak­en part in in­ter­na­tion­al cham­pion­ships, Asma says that she would cer­tain­ly like to but the wom­en’s car­rom team is still in its in­i­tial stage right now. “We ha­ven’t as yet played abroad,” she ex­plains. — S.H.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 18th, 2014