Demo sports become ornamental

Bangalore, May 30: While world class players like Geet Sethi, Michael Ferreira, Yasin Merchant and Manoj Kothari have readily agreed to tak...

Bangalore, May 30: While world class players like Geet Sethi, Michael Ferreira, Yasin Merchant and Manoj Kothari have readily agreed to take part in the National Games, some others, including the current National billiards and snooker champion, Sonic Multani, have decided to skip the National Games where the two disciplines are to be a demonstration sport.

The reason according to those playing truant are “unavoidable circumstances”. Others who have expressed inability to come here for the National Games include Subhash Agrawal, Ashok Shandilya, Nalin Patel and Alok Kumar, who however claimed he had not received an invitation in the first place.

This unfortunate turn of events has forced the KSBA to cut the field from an originally planned 48 to a mere 16 in both games.

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Much of the blame for this must be laid at the door of the Billiards and Snooker Federation of India (BSFI). Instead of working towards getting national recognition for their sport, they did nothing. Instead of backing the KSBA, they permitted the staging of the Om Agarwal memorial tournament in Mumbai on the same dates.

This has allowed the players to wriggle out of the demonstration games. One player, in fact, suggested to the KSBA to get the National Games postponed so as to avoid a clash with the Om Agarwal tournament. Surely, even Om, if he were alive, would have been delighted that his favourite sport was close to being accepted in the Indian Olympic movement!

The BSFI could have avoided the whole controversy by either advancing or postponing the tournament by a few days.

As a bitter KSBA official put it, “if we offered airfare most of these players would make their circumstances avoidable!”

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It is well known that most of the top players make good money from the sport throughout the year. Various clubs and associations cough up a lot of guarantee money for some of the leading players to take part in their tournaments. KSBA, on its part, offered free boarding and lodging for the National Games. It was only for travel fare that the players were asked to dish out.

Billiards and snooker players in India have been adept at grabbing all the goodies, but only a few seem to understand the spirit of giving back something to the game.

Just last month when the efforts of the Karnataka State Billiards and Snooker Association bore fruit with the sport accorded the status of being a demonstration sport by the National Games Organising Committee, billiards followers were thrilled to bits. This, they pointed out, could lead to the game becoming a medal sport in future.

In this context, it is indeed commendable that former world champions Sethi and Ferreira, and a professional snooker player like Yasin Merchant have agreed to take part in the National Games.

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If billiards and snooker do realise their dream of becoming a medal sport, the BSFI can hardly take any credit for that.