Winning medals motivates me to win more, says Asian Billiards Champion Pankaj Advani
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The 24-time World Champion cueist Pankaj Advani has achieved almost everything the sport has to offer. He has bagged one more shining trophy in his scintillating career by winning his 12th title in the Asian Billiards Championship. Yet the flag bearer of cue sport in India wants more.
"Any win is always special. The win is always sweet, the more you win, the more you want. It was good to be back as a winner. The last couple of months were very tiring for me as I was struggling with Covid. But I managed to recover and win the title," said Advani, who defeated his friend Dhruv Sitwala 6-2 in the Asian Billiards Championship final on March 19 in Doha.
"Obviously when you win for the country, you enjoy what you do, you win the medals that give you motivation and you want to do more of it. It's all about enjoying your game. Sometimes we forget that. Of course, everybody wants to win. But at the same time we can't win every match," he told IANS.
It was a repeat of the National Championship final where both played for the title and Advani that time too won 5-2 against his close friend Sitwala.
When asked about the next generation in the sport, India's veteran cueist Advani rued lack of support from the media, saying a lot of good talent is coming out and we need to support them.
"We have very good talent like Ishpreet Singh Chadha, Srikrishna, Lakshaman Rawat and Dhvaj Haria and many more, who have been doing well, but nobody knows about them. They need some space in the media so common people to know about their achievements," he said.
"It's not like that the players like me, Dhruv and Aditya Mehta are doing good, apart from us others are also doing good in the international circuit, but we hardly found anything about them," the 36-year-old said who lost the match against Dhvaj Haria in a one-sided affair in the last-16 stage in the 17th Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB) Inter-unit Billiards and Snooker Championships in Goa.
Advani, who has had Covid-19 twice in the last two years, said that this is such a disease that not only makes you physically weak, it also causes problems in concentration.
"It's has been very difficult for me, but It feels good that after recovering from Covid, I managed to win the Asian title. But the disease is causing more problems in concentration. It is not just during the Covid that you feel weakness, its effects last more than a month and because of that your preparation remains incomplete," he said.
