NBP Ranking Snooker Championship from July 28

KARACHI: National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), much to the relief of the Pakistan Billiards and Snooker Association (PBSA), has vowed to extend its support to snooker despite the uncertainties caused by the shrinking role of the departments in sports promotion in the recent past.

With quite a few acclaimed banks and development financial institutions having trimmed their sports budgets over the last few years, NBP’s support to snooker remained intact and the 11th edition of NBP Ranking Snooker Championship 2019 will be getting underway, as planned, later in the week.

The details of the seven-day event, to be staged at the NBP Sports Complex in Clifton, from July 28 to August 3, were shared by Alamgir Anwar Shaikh, Co-Chairman, PBSA, in a media briefing here at the Karachi Gymkhana on Thursday.

He was handed over the sponsorship cheque of Rs18,00,000 by Syed Khurram Hussain, Divisional Head, NBP, upon the completion of the media briefing. The bank’s head of sports, Iqbal Qasim, was also present on the occasion. The sponsorship amount was Rs500,000 bigger than the one received by the PBSA last year.

There was no raise, however, in the total prize money of the championship which remained Rs185,000 as last year. The winner will become richer by Rs100,000 while the runner-up will receive Rs40,000 with the losing semi-finalists to get Rs 10,000 each and the losing quarter-finalists Rs5,000 each. The highest break award carries a purse of Rs5,000.

Whereas, a total of 40 cueists had appeared in the previous edition of the event, clinched by Muhammad Ijaz, the PBSA has opted for 33 participants this time. The contestants are the top 32 cueists of the country with Hamza Ilyas being awarded a wild card entry.

As far as the format of the event is concerned, the contestants have been divided into eight groups for the preliminary rounds whose matches will be spread over four days.

The champions and the runners-up of each group will qualify for the knockout rounds, starting with the pre-quarter-finals. The league matches will be best-of-seven-frame contests. The quarter-finals will be best-of-nine-frame matches, the semi-finals best-of-11-frame and the final best-of-15-frame.

The semi-finals and the final will be telecast live on Geo Super, the premier sports television channel of the country.

The PBSA has also announced that the top two cueists of the country, at the end of the championship, will be entitled to represent the country in this year’s World Snooker Championship, scheduled to be staged in Turkey in October-November.