IBSF Snooker Championships: PBSA chief unhappy over Asif, Babar’s absence

Syed Khalid Mahmood

KARACHI: The Chairman of the Pakistan Billiards & Snooker Association (PBSA), Ali Asghar Valika, has regretted the non-participation of defending champions, M Asif and Babar Masih, in the IBSF World 6-Red and Teams Snooker Championships 2018 being staged in Egypt.

“Better handling of the matter on part of the PBSA management could have prevented such a bitter and unfortunate outcome,” he conceded while talking to ‘The News’ here on Wednesday.

“The Executive Committee, in its previous meeting, had surely decided to have the 2019 central contracts signed by the cueists in advance but there was no mention of any harsh action if any of them didn’t sign it,” the PBSA Chairman revealed. Asghar Valika, who himself headed the PBSA for a couple of decades from 1988 to 2008, agreed that the matter regarding the timing of signing of the contract could have been amicably resolved in the larger interest of the game.

He expressed his surprise as to why the PBSA President, Munawwar Hussain Sh, refrained from meeting the cueists to resolve the issue directly instead of engaging his associates in this process. “When all the cueists were at the PBSA office in Karachi to collect their tickets and prepare for departure to Egypt the following day, there certainly was ample time to discuss the matter and resolve it through negotiations instead of taking an extreme action,” the PBSA Chairman reckoned. “As it turned only two out of the four Pakistani cueists, M Bilal and M Majid, could proceed to Egypt for such an important international event. It brings bad name to Pakistan as well as to the sport of snooker,” he conceded. “In future the PBSA would be better off naming stand-by cueists, whose visas should also be obtained, in order to meet unforeseen situations as there could be dropouts at the eleventh hour due to injuries as well,” he advised.

With the PBSA Secretariat observing silence and some of the key office-bearers inaccessible on phone, it was gathered from other sources that the Association has convened an emergent meeting on Friday (tomorrow) to deliberate on this issue of non-participation of Asif and Babar in the ongoing IBSF World 6-Red and Teams Snooker Championships.