Sumathipala National Snooker Championship finals Oct. 15

by Sajeewa JAYAKODY

SNOOKER: The finals of the 60th U.W. Sumathipala Memorial National Snooker Championship, which is sponsored by Sumathi Group of Companies, and conducted by the Sri Lanka Billiards and Snooker Association, and the finals will be held at the Sugathadasa Sports Hotel complex on October 15 from 6 p.m. onwards.

This year's national tournament started on October 6. Before commencing the national championship, snooker players from three districts - Colombo (95), Kandy (67) and Galle (21) participated in the district level tournament, which was worked off from June 22 to July 1, 2012.

Twenty-one players were filtered from Colombo district while eight from Kandy and four snooker players from Galle, were qualified for the next level. The selected 33 players from above three districts, were pruned down to eight and they joined together with last year's 24 national players.

Alltogether, 33 cue players have been participating in this year's 10-day national championship.

Meanwhile, former Colombo District Member of Parliament Shafeek Rajabdeen was elected uncontested President of the Sri Lanka Billiards and Snooker Association for the third consecutive year. He is also the current Vice-President of the Asian Billiards and Snooker Association.

Lafir - World Champion

Billiards is the game, which Sri Lanka produced her only world champion in an individual game apart from team game cricket, which Sri Lanka won the Wills World Cup in 1996.

Mohammed Lafir brought honour to the country beating India's Satish Mohan in World Billiards Championship, which was held in 1973 in Bombay (current Mumbai).

Six years before that historic triumph, Lafir had been the runner-up to Englishman Leslie Driffled in the 1967 World Championship held in Colombo.

Homeless B&SASL

Currently, Billiards and Snooker Association of Sri Lanka with immense hardships, is temporarily based in Sugathadasa Sports Hotel Complex. The Association, which started in 1948 had been located at the Racecourse grounds for over 25 years. But, due to numerous reasons it had to shift its location to other places. At the moment, it needs a permanent place.

Indian snooker coach Amaranath here

With Sports Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage's intention to promote cue sports in the country, Indian coach Sathish Amaranath arrived in Sri Lanka for a one-month coaching stint from October 4 to November 4.

During his stay, he has been assigned to conduct coaching camps in Galle, Nuwara Eliya and Kandy disricts to upgrade the playing standards from the grassroots levels by coaching 35 players per day.

Amaranath's role is to bring up the up-and-coming talent from those three districts to Colombo. "My role here is to bring up all the up-coming talented players who are competing in junior, senior nationals and world championship in the future," the Indian mentor said.

Both the winner and the runner-up of the U.W. Sumathipala National Snooker Championship, will be competing in the World Snooker Championship, which will be held in Sophia, Bulgaria in November this year.