MYANMAR cueists have again enlisted the help of Indian billiards coach Manoj Kothari in the lead up to this year’s SEA Games, which will be held in Laos in December.

Mr Kothari recently visited Myanmar and spent 10 days training Myanmar’s national billiards team. The Indian coach has a good track record here; under Mr Kothari’s guidance, Kyaw Oo and Aung San Oo clinched their first SEA Games gold medal, at the 23rd SEA Games in Manila in 2005.

“This is the third time that I have come to Myanmar to coach, the last two times were in 2005 before the SEA Games. After my training, they won gold in Manila and the players congratulated me from there,” Mr Kothari told the Myanmar Times last week.

He is cautiously optimistic Myanmar’s male billiard’s players can their doubles title for the third consecutive time, he said.

“To retain the SEA Games title it will be very difficult and they have to improve their game. They will need to take on board what I’m teaching them because the competition in Laos will be very competitive – Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore have some great players. But Kyaw Oo and Aung San Oo can certainly match them,” Mr Kothari said.

“Myanmar players are intelligent and can play some very beautiful shots. I like Kyaw Oo and respect him as a great player because he has the ability to compete against world-class cueists,” he said.

Kyaw Oo is Myanmar’s number one cueist and, together with Aung San Oo, is the defending SEA Games gold medallist in the billiards doubles event. He finished third at the 36th World Billiards Championships, held in Singapore in 2007, losing to eventual champion Rupesh Shah of India in the semi finals. In the earlier rounds he defeated both the defending champion, Pankaj Advani of India, and the reigning Asian titleholder, Singapore’s Peter Gilchrist.

Dr Min Naing, the coach of Myanmar’s national billiards team, said while the Myanmar Billiards Federation had not finalised its SEA Games team it was preparing four cueists for the competition – Kyaw Oo, Aung San Oo, Aung Htay and Pauk Sa.

He said the US$1500 the federation paid Mr Kothari for his coaching was money well spent.

“We invited him to come here and coach twice in 2005, in May and September,” Dr Min Naing said. “For the coming SEA Games in December, we need his coaching to help improve our players because we have heard that Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam have also prepared well for the competition.”

“Now [Mr Kothari] is an even more experienced coach than in 2005, because he is also coaching and working together with experienced billiards coaches in India, helping some of the best players in the world like Pankaj Advani, the defending IBSF World Billiards champion. So our players can learn a lot from him and he is also very patient in teaching them,” he said.

Billiards player Kyaw Oo said he enjoyed working with Mr Kothari.

“He actually focuses on the technique in his teaching and also trains us how to analyse the game by giving lots of explanations from many different angles – things I’ve never seen before. He also encourages us a lot to improve as players,” Kyaw Oo said.

Mr Kothari burst onto the billiards scene as a player in 1990, when he won the IBSF World Billiards Championship at his debut international tournament.

He retired from the game in 2003 and the 51-year-old mechanical engineer said he now enjoys coaching more than playing.

“Billiards is completely the scientific game. I have seen the science with tremendous passion in this game and it made me interested in it where I had studied the different problems in the game and it gave me the satisfaction of potting the ball, playing in all and learning the game really made me devoted in it,” he said.

“My engineering studies helped me a lot in coaching. A player with no scientific background can do well, but he won’t be able to explain how he plays and why he plays well. I became successful as a coach not only because I was a player but more so because I can explain what is happening on the billiards table in scientific terms.

“The educational background of the players is important in billiards,” he continued. “I started to really understand the game only when I left it. I learned nothing of the game when I was a player because my eyes were blinded by pride in my performance and I couldn’t see beyond myself. In those days, everything depended on winning and losing.

“But when I left the game, suddenly I started to see these things as a coach – things I couldn’t see as a player.”