Silver at the IBSF World Billiards Championship (long format), held in Doha, in November, followed by his maiden National Snooker Championship title in December, cue sports champion and Calcutta boy Sourav Kothari finished off 2023 with a flourish. Yet, the only word uppermost on his mind when t2 called him for a chat was “gratitude”. In a candid interview, Sourav looked back at a difficult time in the championship to finally acing it. Excerpts.
Congratulations on your maiden National Snooker Championship title, Sourav! What was the preparation like?
As far as preparation goes, we leave no stone unturned. That’s the same for every tournament, but I was so pathetic in the group matches that I lost both my first and second group matches. For me, it was appalling because I could see the ball in front of me, but I couldn’t pot it and the worst part is when you can’t assign a reason to it. There wasn’t any kind of pressure too.
I called my father (former world billiards champion Manoj Kothari) after the second group match and I almost broke down. Everything was getting to me that I had come to a stage where I was not being able to qualify for the group. My father calmed me down.
Then all the equations in the group turned out to be such that I had an outside chance to qualify. My father asked me to do whatever I could do, but, you know, negativity sets in. I had to beat my last opponent, Sean Davis, 4-2 or better. I beat that guy 4-0. I don’t know how I turned around a corner. I practised till late at Madras Cricket Club. What my dad told me also made a big difference. He was watching me on video and said I was doing all the wrong things and not following what I had done in my preparation. He said to just do shadow practice at night and then before hanging up, he said ‘Tiger zinda hai’. That inspired me during my match against Sean Davis. I followed his instructions and realised that I wasn’t doing the things that I was supposed to do. There is a drill before you go into a shot. I wasn’t doing anything and one thing led to another and it is a domino effect.
You can easily say that the 4-0 match was a turning point and I qualified and was the 32nd seed to qualify. I was pitted against the number one seed, which was Pankaj Advani. I beat him 5-1 in best of nine and from there on, it was as if the game was coming to me. Earlier on, I was constantly chasing the game.
It’s a huge lesson for me, honestly, that not all is lost until all is lost. Even if there is a ray of hope that you can sustain, you should concentrate on that. Thinking far ahead will put pressure. If you imagine your whole life at once, you’ll constantly be under pressure. The thing is we all know, but that’s where these life coaches come and they reinstate this belief that you just concentrate on the next shot.
The problem is we tend to often think of the outcome and not about the process...
Exactly. And, you know everything... you have won a world title, so many national titles, Asian titles, yet the mind plays tricks and that’s why if you have somebody by your side who can rein you in, (it’s great).... I was a different player in the knockout.
So, you ended 2023 on a high...
Major high, but a little bittersweet also because I lost in the finals of the billiards. It could have been a grand double for me, but winning the national snooker title, which is the most coveted championship in India, and then playing the finals of billiards in 10 days is incredible, especially how things changed overnight for me. Sometimes we are very hard on ourselves and that’s good because it keeps you motivated to do better, but sometimes, you have to look at how far you’ve come. My national snooker title was also a note to the detractors. When somebody puts me down, it pushes me to test my limits.
What should the approach to failures be like, in general?
One thing that we as sportsmen have to accept in our lives is that you can’t always win. No matter how good you are or what your reputation is or how much you have achieved in your life, every day is a new day. If you’ve missed a simple shot, what you are made of depends on how you regroup and ready yourself to play the next shot. The lesson is you have to quickly bounce back, no matter what. You can’t change the past. In my sport, the opponent cannot influence the way you play. So, I have to constantly keep erasing the memory of the past and that is what defines character.
That can be isolating or empowering, depending on how to treat it, right?
Absolutely. My father has always taught me since childhood that you have to erase history. You have to work hard and look forward to the future, but every time you fail, you have to come back and analyse. I am a little hard on myself and I don’t think I can deal with failures easily. But, it lasts for two-three days and then I come to terms with it, but it’s something that I have learnt to live with because I can’t change it now.
But are you dealing with it better?
Yes, and the primary reason is because at least in billiards, I have won everything that is there to be won — the World title, the Asian title, the national title, the Asian Games gold. It’s easier to bounce back because you know that you’ve had your share of humble successes. Earlier, it was very hard because you are constantly trying to prove to yourself that you can achieve this or that. I won the national and Asian titles in the same year, in 2014. When you have that one big win, you suddenly start flowing. Winning the world professional title in 2018 was a huge monkey off my back. After that when you go to play a tournament, you play it with much more ease. Also, failure is not permanent. You will have success, but the only constant is that you have to keep working hard.
How to deal with success?
Success can make you complacent but it lasts for two days. Then you are as good as your last performance. It is very important how to deal with success. Once after winning a big tournament in Australia, I came back home and kept basking in the glory, missing my practice. On the fifth day, my dad came and asked me what was going on and that I was committing a grave mistake. He said I had to keep my arm moving. There was another tournament I played in Bombay right after and played miserably badly. That gave me a lesson and that huge victory became irrelevant. I had thought the momentum and glory of the other tournament would drag me through this one and I would effortlessly win it. I realised you can’t take anything for granted and the only way is to work hard.
