It is a matter of folklore that aspiring billiard players must practice eight hours a day from an early age. Never seven hours or nine hours, always precisely eight hours. Is it worth it? Well, if the effort could get you into the last sixteen of the World Professional Championship, and earn you a week's stay at the Leela Kempinski Hotel, Bombay, then the answer is a most resounding, "Yes." What other occupation, except maybe professional snooker, can offer the delights of the orient merely for having the will-power to exist on a diet of coke and crisps for a year or two. The sallow complexion associated with the necessary miss-spent youth will soon disappear after an hour-or-so loafing by the side of the Leela pool in 34°C. Culinary delights abounding, to say nothing of an extraordinary profusion of dark-skinned, dark-eyed beauties at every turn. There are drawbacks of course. It is not advisable to go looking for a taxi at 4.00am as was the lot of Clive Everton jetting in from Dubai. The Snooker Scene editor would also no doubt bear eloquent testimony to the condition known politely as, "Bombay Belly," Mike Russell would also bear testimony though he had a quite different term for it. Russell, after an awesome display against Subhash Agrawal, succumbed after a banana milkshake and was never again quite the same player. But, with care, such things can be avoided, and anyway, what nicer than cleaning your teeth in a glass of Johnny Walkers? Big Clive recovered sufficiently to beat Michael Ferreira which these days, whilst not the accomplishment it might once have been, is no mean feat. Geet Sethi is quite a different basket of chapattis. Everton, trailing by a thousand after the first session, threw caution to the winds in the second, yes, caution to the winds, and actually out-pointed the world champion scoring three excellent centuries. Everton should have been off to commentate on snooker, but with all Gulf Air flights cancelled thanks to the plague, he was stuck in Bombay. After his second session with the champion, so elated was he, I think that if he had gone to the top floor of the Leela and launched himself Superman style then he would have soared. "Is it a plane, is it a bird?" No it's Clive on his way to the Dubai Snooker Classic.
Bombay is a long sprawling place built on seven islands, much of the land reclaimed from the Arabian sea. It is home to some nine million people half of whom are said to sleep on the streets. The other half seem able to sustain an enviable life style complete with air conditioning, posh cars, servants to pander to their every beck and call. This has been my first trip to the Indian Sub-Continent and never in all my wanderings have I seen such quite horrendous social contrasts, but neither have I ever been received with more hospitality and friendliness. The almost childlike eagerness on the part of my Indian acquaintances to play the perfect host has been quite touching. Nor have they attempted to hide the sights on the periphery of the city which induce the most savage culture shock that the first-time visitor from the West could possibly imagine. It is easy to sit at home and say that there are too many people, that if they would make the effort and get rid of all the rats, that if they would initiate a proper system of contraception, then they wouldn't get plagues and they wouldn't be over-populated. Talk is cheap. The sheer size of the problem has only to be glimpsed to be realised. But there is another side. Though my stay in Bombay was of the proverbial five minutes duration, it was enough to become fascinated by the sheer vitality, the vibrancy, the intelligence of a Great City.
I ventured forth one morning to visit a spot I had read about in the guide book. I had not anticipated the distance involved, and though given a lift in the World Champion's chauffeur driven car, it took an hour and twenty minutes to get there. I saw little of the town on my way as I was mostly cowering behind the rear seat and that is about the best comment on the traffic that can be made, though when I asked Mike Russell, a regular visitor, on which side of the road did they drive, he replied, "Either." Mr Sethi gave me various pieces of advice and off I went on a quite fascinating walk around that small part of the city. I took a taxi back. Most taxis are converted Fiat 1100s vintage 1960, but still running well, expertly maintained, clearly lovingly cared for, and astonishingly unscathed. The journey took an hour and a quarter of hair-raising driving, and I was charged 200 rupees. This is a little over four pounds and I was probably being ripped off. I gave the man 300 rupees and he went on his knees and kissed my shoes - for six quid!
Earlier this week I was given a guided tour of the city by Michael Ferreira It was just about the most fascinating guided tour I have ever had. Mr Ferreira pointed out places of interest that the normal tourist would never see, he held forth upon the history of the city, and the legacy of the Raj. The tour finished at his club, the Bombay Gymkhana. Ferreira imperiously dismissed a couple of snooker players from his favourite table; I was given full VIP treatment and watched as he practised. The balls were fielded by a white uniformed slave who clearly knew Michael's practice methods very thoroughly indeed. Hardly a word passed between them as the lackey fielded and spotted the object balls to Ferreira's requirements. Fifty long pots, a dozen-or-so long losers, twenty minutes of red ball, fifty or sixty pots from the spot. He was cueing very smoothly and hardly ever missed. The next day in his match against Everton his highest beak was 95 and his match average a mere 9.2, and this against a player who had been so ill the night before that there was some doubt as to whether he would be able to play at all. How can a player of such knowledge and ability play so absolutely awful. He was not the only one. Against Devendra Joshi, Mike Russell had a session average of 114.7 and a match average of 72.9. These are figures that hark back to the age of Davis, Newman, and Smith. In the Final the Mighty Mike was unrecognisable. He had only two centuries in the four hour match, a second session average of just over eight, and a match average of, for him, a paltry seventeen. Quite inexplicable.
The expected Sethi/Russell final didn't materialise. It was, instead, the Gold Flake girls' heart-throb, the genial Middlesbrough professional, Peter Gilchrist who came through and triumphed. He had prepared for the tournament by playing a lot of golf. Peter was perhaps a shade lucky to get through his first match, against Roxton Chapman, by just 32 points. But the lanky Teessider was playing himself into form and striking the ball superbly well. He got past Norman Dagley by nearly a thousand, eased past Geet Sethi, and overcame Russell in the final by the astonishing margin of nearly 900 points. In modern billiards it would be impossible to do any better than that.
This week in Bombay is for me, already becoming a jumbled memory of billiards, wealth, luxury, squalor, panic over plague, cancelled flights, health checks, bottled beer, heat, smells, full houses at many sessions, a hundred other things; but the abiding memory is that of a beaming, radiant, Gilchrist, holding the cup, standing in front of the Hotel Notice board which reads, "The Leela Kempenski congratulates Peter Gilchrist, World Professional Billiards Champion, 1994," The cameras flashed, the autograph hunters hovered, whilst the pianist in the Orchid Lounge thumped out, "Congratulations."