It all started in India
New Nation, 18 April 1976
SNOOKER is not a game one often associates with long, hot summers, but it was born 100 years ago in an Indian summer so hot, so long, and so boring that only a new game could relieve the nenui of the Indian Army officers stationed at Ootacumund in the Nilgirt Hills in southern India.
Field – Marshal St. Neville Bowles Chamberlain, formerly of the Devonshire Regiment, but by then retired from active service into an advisory post with the Indian Army, was one of the day-in, day-out regulars at the Ooty Club, the centre of social life for the officers, where billiards, the father of all billiard table games, pyramids, and life pool were all played.
It was his idea to combine elements from all three games Into a new game which came to be known as snooker.
Chamberlain’s new game proved a popular Innovation, but often less popular with those players who by accident or design left the cue-ball in such a position that their opponents could not strike the ball “on.”
Such a player would be called usually jokingly, a “snooker,” a nickname given to first-year cadets at the Royal Military College. Woolwich, with the implication that they were the lowest of the low.
For about 10 years, snooker remained as exclusive to the Ooty Club (whose table stands to this day) as the Wall Game to Eton but in 1885 Chamberlain met John Roberts, not only the professional billiards champion, but the dominant personality in billiards trade and promotion, in Bangalore.
RULES
On his return to Britain, Roberts began to commercialise the game and, in 1891, the rules and the position of the coloured balls being subject to a number of local interpretations, John Dowland, a minor professional. produced the first generally accepted set of rules.
Meanwhile, in 1887, the game had reached Australia, possibly through members of the Indian Army, but more likely through word of mouth from British professional players.
Frank Smith and Henry Upton Alcock, a table maker, claimed that they had invented it, but In fact Smith’s role was limited to regularising the game and rules in Australia and Alcock’s to providing the equipment.
The English Amateur Snooker Championship was instituted in 1918 and was bizarrely won in 1918 by an American who practised dally for several months at the Palmerston Restaurant before entering pseudonymously as T. N. Palmer, but there was no professional championship until 1927 when Joe Davis persuaded the Billiards Association to run one and duly won it.
SLUMP
It was, of course, Davis, with his personality, skill, and business flair, who transformed snooker professionally and evolved most of the break-building techniques which are now part of the armoury of all the leading players.
In the mid 50s, however, there was a snooker slump which lasted until the late 60s when three then top amateurs, Ray Reardon, John Spencer, and Gary Owen, became the first new professionals since 1952.
Now, interest in snooker runs at an unprecedentedly high level. The game has become more international, the top players earn a great deal of money and amateur tournaments proliferate.
Success has brought its problems but progress is discernible on most fronts and should result in a consolidation of snookers’ status as one of the greatest Indoor games — Guardian