LAHORE: World U-18 snooker champion Naseem Akhtar on Wednesday gave credit to his family for winning laurels at the world level and urged the government to lend him support.

“My elder brother Fakhar Zaman supported me a lot,” maintained Naseem while talking to the media here. “There was hardly any support from the government and my brother and family enabled me to reach this stage,” said the U-18 world snooker champion.

Naseem who belongs to Sahiwal recently won the title after beating a Chinese rival Peifan Lei 5-3 in the final in Beijing, producing ripples in the country’s sports fraternity which has been struggling in almost all sports at international level.

Nevertheless, Naseem said the Pakistan Billiard Snooker Federation (PBSF) helped him a lot in achieving his goal of winning the U-18 title.

The young cueist also thanked PPP co-chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari for promising him to bear his education expenses. But he urged Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Punjab chief minister to pay attention to the promotion of snooker.

“The government should give proper patronage to snooker the way it supports and promotes cricket,” he remarked while stating that he wanted to win maximum titles at the world level.

Published in Dawn, July 20th, 2017