NEW DELHI: The Delhi Billiards and Snooker Association (DBSA) has been celebrating the 50 years of its inception and the cue sports fraternity came together to commemorate the occasion.
The association was formed by Ajit Singh with eight other ardent billiards lovers and immediately exhibition matches were held in the national capital with the efforts of Yashbir Sharma and Nirmal Khandelwal.
Top players of that era including Wilson Jones, Michael Ferreira, Girish Parekh and Arvind Savur participated in exhibition games.
In a momentous feat, the DBSA was chosen as a host to organise the World Amateur Billiards Championships in 1981. In 1985, the World Billiards Championships was allotted to the DBSA, which was inaugurated by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and President of India, Giani Zail Singh, gave away the prizes. Geet Sethi won his maiden World title at the championships.
In 1989, Yasin Merchant won his first Asian Snooker title in Delhi at the meet organised by the DBSA. In 1991, the country’s biggest-ever tournament was held in Delhi, when world champion Stephen Hendry, John Parrot, Steve Davis and John Murphy, among others, participated in it, which carried a prize money of 75000 pound.
Delhi-based officials have served the cue sports and the national body – Billiards and Snooker Federation of India (BSFI) – in various capacities – Nirmal Khandelwal (vice president 1990-98), Ravi K Tandon (vice president 1998-2010) and Vijay Goel (vice president 2016-present). Tandon has served as manager of cue sports in all editions of the Asian Games (1998-2010) when the sport was part of the multi-discipline events.
