KARACHI: The seventh national junior under-21 snooker championship which springs into action at Movenpick Arcade on Monday heralds the start of new season and the Pakistan Billiards and Snooker Federation (PBSF) hierarchy vowed to continue the good work from where it had left in the preceding year.

“We’ve lined up certain things which, among others, envisage hosting of a global event in the city, starting construction work at the proposed Sindh Snooker Academy and sending three juniors to Beijing on a one month training assignment,” the PBSF president Alamgir Shaikh told newsmen while unveiling details of the juniors event at Karachi Gymkhana on Saturday.

Elaborating, he said, the PBSF will send three promising cueists — Hamza Akbar, Asjad Iqbal and Mohammad Majid Ali — to Chinese Academy in Beijing in March on a training trip.

He reiterated that construction of snooker academy on a piece of land allotted by the Karachi Municipal Corporation in Sept 2012, will start soon. Its design has already been approved by the Karachi Building Control Authority, he added.

Continuing with the tradition of hosting an international event, he said Pakistan will play host to World 6-Reds and Team Event snooker championships from Aug 6 to 15 in the city.

He commended the performance of cueists who have come up with shining performance winning a total of nine medals in global competitions starting with Asif’s feat of world title at Sofia, Bulgaria, in Nov 2012 and culminating with Mohammad Sajjad’s silver medal in the same event at Bangalore in Nov last.

Slamming the government for step-motherly treatment to the game, he said the prime minister has doled Rs 50 million to the Pakistan Squash Federation and in contrast approved a meagre Rs0.5 million for the former world champion Asif, defying their own notification of awarding Rs10 million for winning gold at the world event.

He said the winners and runners-up of the juniors event will represent the country at the 2015 Asian and world juniors event. Similarly, as per policy, the top four of the event will be eligible to compete in all the domestic national ranking events during the year.

Sponsors’ representative Azfar Arshad, executive vice-president of Jubilee General Insurance also spoke on the occasion.

Mohammad Majid Ali will defend his crown in the event which carry Rs1,30,000 prize money.

Groups:

A: Abdul Raheem (Punjab), Khushi Mohammad (Balochistan), Sanaullah Sattar (Sindh).

B: Ali Zaman Khan (Sindh), Junaid Babar (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Haris Tahir (Punjab).

C: Ahsan Wakeel (Khybner Pakhtunkhwa), Mohammad Ibrahim (Balochistan), Sameer Khan (Sindh), Mohammad Ali (Punjab).

D: Nouman Iqbal (Islamabad), Hazratullah (KP), Mohammad Afzaal (Punjab), Junaid Ali (Sindh).

E: Taimoor Aftab (Balochistan), Sameer-ul-Hassan (Sindh), Azam (KP), M. Saqib (Punjab).

F: Fahad Khan (Sindh), Saifullah (Punjab), Ather Ali (Balochistan), Umer Javed (KP).

G: Mohammad Faheem (Punjab), Mohammad Hassan Anwar (Islamabad), Tanveer Baluch (Sindh), Rabi-ul-Hasan (Balochistan).

H: Mohammad Kashif (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Mohammad Adil (Balochistan), Amir Tariq (Punjab), Gawish Khan (Sindh).—A.Z.

Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2015

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