Maharashtra's No 1

It was a special birthday for 27-year-old Omar Balsara as he clinched the senior title in the Maharashtra State Selection Billiards and Snooker Tournament on November 17, 2005 at the P. J. Hindu Gymkhana in Bombay. Ranked number one in Maharashtra in snooker, Balsara will represent the state at the nationals in Madras in mid January. "The nationals are very much open. Everyone is beatable. It could be anyone’s game,” he says.

Omar Balsara

Among the top players in the country, Balsara teamed up with giant of the green baize Geet Sethi (seven times world billiards champion) at the Reid and Taylor Insta Snooker Doubles Championship in mid December at the Bombay Gymkhana against fancied foreign teams. "The Chinese (the eventual winners) and the Thais are way ahead, the Pakistanis are at our level,” he says. Though substantial success eluded the pair at this competition, Balsara believes it was "a great experience playing with someone (Sethi) whom you have grown up admiring. Insta snooker is a new concept, with 20-minute frames and a 30-second time limit for each shot.”

In 2005, Balsara won the Islam Gymkhana Invitation tournament and was runner up at the Hindu Gymkhana Wilson Jones Handicap Snooker tournament. Working with his family firm Trocad Technologies Private Limited, which is into trading of electronic components, Omar’s late father Rohinton was also a lover and player of cue sports.