Imagine being a multiple-world champion in two sports and still having to deal with the fact that a large part of your country is unaware about you. Pankaj Advani has been living with that since 2003, when he won the IBSF Snooker Championship.
On 12th December, Advani defeated Peter Gilchrist 6-3 in the Point Format to win his 12th World Billiards title and 16th overall. It was a fantastic game of billiards that ebbed and flowed through its course, with both players showing their class.
Advani began the match quite brilliantly, taking the first two games and nearly scoring centuries in both (98 and 97). However, Gilchrist fought back to take the next two games, after which Advani raised his level again to take four out of the next five and seal the championship in style.
Speaking to Sportskeeda, Advani revealed that it became a little tough to concentrate on his game due to the crowd pressure and expectations.
“I actually wanted to control the game from the beginning but it was tough. Playing at home is good due to the crowd being on your side and there being a lot of positive energy, but you need to be in the zone as well. I decided to focus on my breaks and managed to fend off Peter’s challenge. He is obviously a great player and we share a healthy relationship, but all that went out of the window during the match,” he says.
Despite being a world champion, Advani has often been required to explain his craft to people. Most people think billiards and snooker are synonyms, but that is like saying baseball and cricket are that same.
While snooker is a 22-ball game (one cue ball, 15 red balls and 6 colour balls), billiards is a three-ball game (one red and two cue balls). Furthermore, the objectives in both games are quite different as well. Snooker requires you to score maximum points while potting the balls on the table (in a certain order), whereas billiards is about scoring points while keeping them together.
The complexities of the sports have prevented them from being a source of mass entertainment. Thus, being a cue sports champion in India is not considered a big deal; most people just do not know how tough it is to play snooker or billiards.
Advani is that rare specimen who plays both sports at a high level, something that no one else in the world does. Why does he do it? “I love challenges and I want to be a man who wants to do the impossible. A lot of people ask me questions about taking up two sports. My answer is simple: I do what I love and what I love is taking up a challenge,” he says.
For a lot of people, snooker and billiards are associated with the elite culture – clubs, where the rich play, and parlours, where people come to relax. However, Advani thinks that this opinion, especially the former, is not the right projection of the game.
“I have often heard that snooker is an expensive sport to play and it is played by the rich. This is incorrect. In fact, I can tell you clearly, tennis and golf are much more expensive than snooker and billiards. You require memberships, infrastructure and sponsors. In cue sports, all you need is a cue, and the rest falls in place if you are naturally talented,” he says.
Advani, like a lot of great Indian sportspersons, started off at a young age and learnt the game through the “parlour,” where his brother used to play with friends. “My brother Shree has been instrumental in shaping up my career, and it is he who took me to the parlour with him for the first time. For some odd reason, I fell in love with the game instantly and then I got the chance to take a shot on a pool table. The object ball was about five feet away from the cue ball and managed to pot it,” he recollects.
Advani hasn't looked back since then, and over two decades later, he has seen it all and done it all in cue sports. Alongside Geet Sethi, Pankaj Advani is the greatest cueist produced by India, but by no means is he done yet.
He thinks cue sports have a bright future in the country, and hopes that the federations do something about it. Advani is happy that his 2016 ended with his sweet 16th, and is now heading to Mumbai to play another snooker tournament.
A rare multi-sport world champion, it is back to the beige for the man from Bangalore in another few days’ time.
