A Natural Champion

The Bangalore-based cueist has now won a record 11th world title in billiards

Earlier last week, a rather major Indian sporting achievement went largely unnoticed—the Bangalore cueist Pankaj Advani won a record 11th world title in billiards. The latest addition to his kitty is the World Billiards Championship (point format). After winning two other world titles this year, the World Team Billiards Championship and the IBSF World 6-Red Snooker Champion, he became the first to hold world titles in both snooker and billiards in the same year. There is also the possibility that he may end the year with more titles: at the time of going to press, he is competing in the World Billiards Championship (time format), and will participate in the IBSF World Snooker Championship in his hometown, Bangalore, in November.

Born in 1985 in Pune, Advani spent the first five years of his life in Kuwait, before moving to Bangalore with his family after the Gulf War. His father passed away when he was six. When he was about 10, Advani began accompanying his elder brother, Shree, who would play snooker post school hours, to a neighbouring snooker parlour. After a few weeks, he began playing the game on his own. It is said that such was his innate ability at the game that the managing committee of the Karnataka Snooker and Billiards Association awarded him a membership for free. In just a year’s time after he picked up a cue, Advani was not only competing in a state-level tournament (Sampath Memorial), but he also beat his elder brother Shree in the finals. Immediately after, at the age of 12, he won the state junior championships. By the age of 15, he won the Indian Junior Billiards Championship and held the title for seven years in a row.

Immediately after turning professional at the age of 18 in 2003, he won the IBSF World Snooker Championship that year, after which, in 2005, he became the first cueist to achieve the grand double of winning both the timed and points format of the IBSF World Billiards Championship. He repeated this feat of a grand double in 2008. He is also the only person to have won all five billiards tournaments in a season, an accomplishment he achieved in 2005 by winning both the Junior and Senior National Championships, the Asian Billiards Championship, and the World Billiards Championship in both point and time formats.

What makes Advani’s feats even more remarkable is that he plays both snooker and billiards at the top level, perhaps currently the only active cueist to be doing so. Most cueists usually choose one sport over the other, so that they can focus more and excel at one particular game. Not only are the two games different, requiring different strategies and planning, usually the dates of both sports in major events is not more than a week apart. A player has to quickly adapt his game to switch from one sport to the other.

Because of his skill as a snooker player, and on the advice of his long-time coach Arvind Savur, Advani became a professional snooker player in 2012. The coach felt that he was too good a player to not be playing as a professional. But earlier this year, Advani gave up his pro snooker card, because the rigours of pro snooker did not allow him to play more billiards. “Playing [professional snooker] over six months in England, there was no chance of playing billiards and I was missing my family as well. My sole objective is to excel in both [billiards and snooker] and it will be possible only if I’m based in India,” he told The Times of India then. Since that announcement, the ongoing World Billiards Championship has been his biggest event. The decision seems to have paid off. He has won the title in the point format. He might very well win it in the time format too.

BangalorebilliardsIBSFPankaj Advani