‘I find India’s obsession with quadrennial sports events amusing’: The Pankaj Advani interview

Pankaj Advani is a massive fan of Roger Federer, and like all hardcore fans of the tennis star, is ecstatic about his resurgence. However, unlike most other fans, Advani is in a unique position to provide insight into what it takes for a top athlete to climb back to the top of their sport, after repeated setbacks. After all, the 16-time world champion in billiards and snooker has been in similar situations, and found his way back to the summit of his sport.

“It is wonderful to see him play so well again, Federer has achieved a lot,” Advani said in a chat with Scroll.in. “I am also at a stage where I have established myself and won so many titles over a period of time. But it is about reinventing yourself, and that’s what Federer has been able to do so well. As an athlete there is no end to learning and improving and evolving. Beyond the titles and fame, it’s also a feeling of fulfillment that you get when you are still improving and realising your complete potential. There are so many things you learn from watching these top athletes perform, it’s amazing what great ambassadors of their sport they are.”

Speaking of being ambassadors of a sport, Advani is often the sole flag bearer for cue sports in India. He has single-handedly achieved so much in both billiards and snooker, it’s hard to imagine any upcoming player matching up to that.

Future of cue sports in India

“It makes me nervous [and] at the same time it is a privilege to be flying that flag high,” Advani said. However, he insisted he is not the only one and that he has learnt not to take his place for granted as there are several talented Indian players in the two cue sports.

“There are a lot of other players and they have achieved quite a bit, but then a lot of people say that Pankaj has set the benchmark and I don’t think that it is fair to them because everyone realizss their potential in their own time,” Advani said.

“In billiards, there is Dhwaj Haria from Gujarat, who reached the semi-finals of the World Championship last year and then there is Shrikrishna from Tamil Nadu. In snooker, we have quite a few youngsters as well, such as Ishpreet Chadha from Bombay. Give them a good three years and they will be champions,” he added.

Talking about the women in the sport, he was all praise for Vidya Pillai, who recently won the silver at the World Championships. “Vidya Pillai deserves all the accolades that come her way,” Advani said. “She has reached the final once before she has won lots of medals internationally, so she’s highly accomplished. It’s unfortunate that she lost [on the gold] because she was almost there, but I am sure we will have ladies world champion as well very soon.”

In a field where most athletes choose to pick one out of billiards and snooker after the initial years, Advani has managed to be consistent champion in both. How exactly does he manage to balance both sports, after all this time?

“Billiards is my wife, snooker is my mistress,” Advani said, adding that he is never going to choose between the two sports. “Earlier, I achieved a lot in billiards, then I gave most of my time to snooker in the last few years, and now I am at the stage where I want to balance both,” he added.

Advani is evidently very passionate about his sport, but being a non-Olympic sport, billiards and snooker have never quite attracted many eyeballs or investment. Advani himself is barely seen in any advertisements despite being one of India’s most consistently performing athletes. In fact, not enough people might even recall Advani or the sport he plays, even if seen in an endorsement.

These are uncomfortable questions, yet Advani was straightforward in his response, even going into detail about the various off-field issues surrounding sport in India.

“If it’s not on television, how do you expect people to know about the sport,” was Advani’s counter-question. And a very valid one at that. Most people in India, even if they could tell you who Pankaj Advani is, might not be able to tell you the difference between billiards and snooker – two different sports played in the same setting. But without the sports being televised, very few people would be able to access it.

Need for televised coverage

“The Federation needs to do a lot more,” he said. “They need to educate the people, they need to get it on television. Once the sport is on television, people will understand the difference. It will not happen overnight, it has to be shown to millions of people on television.”

This lack of visual coverage is also the answer to the original question – why Pankaj Advani, the multiple world, Asian and national champion, is not a brand like several other prominent Indian sports stars. “Obviously, I understand that our sport is not on television, that’s the reason why you would probably not see me in on television that often,” he replied.

One of the ways to bring cue sports to television is through the league format. Recently, there has been a marked increase in the number of sports having India-based leagues and a subsequent increase in its popularity. Take the Pro-Kabaddi League and the Kabaddi World Cup for example. But can there be a league for billiards or snooker?

“There might be one soon,” Advani revealed, saying that it is the federation who should be asked the question. But when it happens, the poster boy for cue sports in India will definitely be a part of it.

“I feel that it is also my job to introduce people to the sport and inspire them,” he said. “I like explaining the difference between the two, as the ambassador of the sport it is also my duty to tell the people that billiards is played with three balls, snooker is played with 22 balls, the basic difference between both games,” he added.

But will this potential league be able to build an audience on the often sport-saturated Indian TV? Cue sports are not as action-oriented as many of the other on-field sports, and that can be a prospective drawback for television.

“I think there will be audience because the format is very exciting. It’s a six-red format in snooker, not the traditional 15 red – crisp and unpredictable,” he responded. “There are so many snooker parlours where the sport is played, it needs to be packaged and shown to the people – this is how it’s played, these are the top players, this is the format – short and sweet, finishing the match in one one-an-half hours,” he suggested.

This brings us to another uncomfortable area – how there is no regular visibility for sports, even the ones on television, unless it’s a periodic, multi-nation competition. Advani said that he found India’s obsession with quadrennial sporting events amusing. “Our focus as a nation when it comes to sport is all about cricket and Olympics,” he said. “I am not saying this with any bitterness and negativity, I am just stating a fact. We need to understand that if we really want consistent achievers in Indian sport, then we need to start consistently following sport. I find our obsession with quadrennial events amusing. We measure sporting greatness based on a once-in-a-four-year performance, but actually greatness has to be measured over a period of time, tournament after tournament, year after year.”

Athletes get distracted with all the focus on them during the Olympics, Advani said. “Only during the Olympics, we develop this craze around the athletes who are going there – the incentives are so huge, there is so much at stake for these athletes. The same athletes go on to World Championships, perform and win gold medals. What happens to them during Olympics? There is too much of a spotlight which they are not used to for three-and-a-half years before and after the Olympics, and it gets too distracting.”

Advani also went on to make a case for non-Olympic sports which tend to get lost unless there is a major championship victory. “Why differentiate between Olympic and non-Olympic sports? It’s not like we are working any less. We are working as hard as any other sportsperson in the country and we respect every sport for what it is. Let’s just appreciate every sport for what it is, whether it’s in the Olympics or Asian Games or not.”

The weightage given to quadrennial events gives rise to another uncomfortable question – that of national awards, and one could say that Advani answered that with a straight cue. For context, Advani, who won the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna back in 2006, was not considered for the Padma awards this year and he had quite a bit to say about it on Twitter.

“I didn’t get the Padma Bhushan this year after breaking all sorts of records and winning 16 World titles. I don’t know what the basis is for these awards,” he said. “I remember when I got the Khel Ratna it was very simple: They said you have ‘X’ number of points because you won the Asian Championships and the World Billiards Championship. I was the clear-cut winner, although there were heavyweights like Rahul Dravid and Mahesh Bhupathi who were contenders as well. Now, I don’t know whether it is based on popularity, or whether it is based on what.”

Awards are but a small part of the recognition to spread the sports culture he talked about. Bringing the sport to the audience through television seems like a good start. “It’s got the potential to be an exciting and visually appealing sport. The television coverage, once it happens, it will change a lot of things for us,” he said.