There is no question that snooker plays second fiddle to the more high profile sports events that have earned Dubai its rightful title as the region’s sporting capital.

    Golf, horse racing and tennis have grabbed the global headlines in recent years, but snooker had established itself in the UAE long before the first seeds were sewn at the Emirates Golf Club or Nad Al Sheba, and well before the foundations were laid at the Dubai Tennis Stadium.

    The game led the city’s sporting charge into the international arena through the Dubai Duty Free Classic in the late 1980’s, when the likes of Steve Davis, Terry Griffiths, Stephen Hendry and Jimmy White competed for one of the biggest prizes in snooker. When the tournament was scrapped in 1994 the game seemed to stall, but it is emerging from the ashes with a vengeance, led by one charismatic young Dubai policeman who is holding on to a dream of one day joining the game’s elite.

    Mohammed Al Joker is the son of one of the game’s highest profile administrators in the UAE – Sultan Al Joker – and has become the sport’s biggest star in the region.

    Joker has won every domestic accolade the UAE has to offer and he has dominated the country’s Number One ranking along with sparring partner Mohammed Shehab for the past nine years.

    His obsession with the green baize began as a 14 year-old when most of his friends were playing football. Introduced to the game by his father, the young Joker found he had a natural potting ability, which has since earned him a reputation as the Arab World’s Ronnie O’Sullivan.

    “I liked football and all the other sports that my friends were playing in school but for me I just wanted to play as much snooker as I could. I loved the game and it was very much a dominating part of my teenage years,” he said.

    But at 29, Joker believes his snooker career has reached a dead end and says that unless the local association introduces international tournaments in Dubai, the game is in danger of stagnating.

    “Myself and Mohammed Shehab have been the top two players for many years now here and I feel we’ll only get better if we can play against the best in the game,” he said. “The standard is good here, and there are more players playing a higher standard than ever before, but there is only so far you can go without playing against a better class opponent.

    “The game here will not move on unless this happens. The two of us probably haven’t improved our games for some time now. I believe we need to have four or five high quality international tournaments here in the UAE. The end of the Dubai Duty Free Classic was a real blow because it denied many players here the chance to watch the world’s best and learn.”

    The father of two is also annoyed that the world governing body for snooker has made it almost impossible for the likes of him and Shehab to play on the bigger stage.

    “Six years ago I played in the qualifying competition for the World Championships in Blackpool but that way into the tournament has been stopped now. They have changed the system and players like us are missing out.”

    It is a similar situation that tennis has found itself in here in the UAE. Local talent is turning its back on the game due to a lack of investment in training and facilities but tennis’s trump card is that the Dubai Tennis Championships is stronger than ever. It allows the best local players to rub shoulders with the game’s legends, an opportunity long since gone in snooker here.

    Despite the set-backs and his fading dream of playing at the Crucible, Joker still practices religiously at the Dubai Snooker Club in Karama for up to five hours every day, and underlined his caliber last year when he reached the last 32 at the World Amateur Championships in Cairo.

    “I was playing really well and felt confident but I took ill after reaching the last 32 and couldn’t continue further. It was a real blow,” he said.

    The sport has come a long way since the Dubai Snooker Club opened its doors in 1984 with one full-length table. It now boasts 15 championship tables and a host of clubs have now opened up across the city.

    The game here enjoyed a massive boost in 1997 when former World Number One Doug Mountjoy signed up for two years to coach the country’s best players in Dubai.

    Mountjoy was a huge admirer of Joker’s and won the respect of the local players.

    “Doug was good for snooker here. He was a big name and someone we had all watched on television when we were growing up. He helped move our games along and we were sad to see him leave after just a couple of years.”

    Former professional Nic Barrow took up where Mountjoy left off in 1999 and has since introduced the game to a variety of age groups and new players.

   Joker admits that it would be tough now for him to make it onto the world stage and insists it would take an overhaul in the way the game is run to give him the chance. His trips to Asian tournaments have brought only limited success, and he admits that it is sometimes tough to motivate himself when he is preparing for local tournaments.

    However, Joker is far from turning his back on a game that has played such a big part of his life and insists that he will continue to be the man to beat for a few years to come.

Snooker Boom

   When Mohammed Al Joker first took up the game, there was only the one venue where players could quench their thirst for the game. Now there appears to be a snooker club or association on every street corner in Dubai, which now boasts some of the best facilities for the game anywhere.

   “Snooker has really taken off and our tables are busy all year round now with a variety of nationalities,” said A.S. Kumar of the Dubai Snooker Club in Karama. “It is certainly a sport that most people didn’t realise was so popular here but there are now hundreds of players playing snooker on a regular basis now.”

    The Dubai Snooker Club in Karama is open every day and tables can be hired for just Dhs15 per hour, which includes lighting. It has 15 championships size tables and comfortable surroundings to make it a pleasant experience – just remember to switch off your mobile phone!

Nurturing talent

    UAE snooker coach Nic Barrow has made a big impression since taking over from Doug Mountjoy as the UAE snooker coach in 1999.

    Barrow’s busy workload is split between coaching the country’s best players like Mohammed Al Joker and Mohammed Shehab and helping to promote the game through introducing it to new young players and nurturing their talents.

    The former professional snooker player and qualified Professional Billiards & Snooker Association coach appreciates that it is tough to develop the best players here due to lack of competition but has added an edge to training sessions when building up to big tournaments by infusing a sense of competition into them.

    “Both Mohammed Shihab and Mohammed Joker are very competitive,” he said. “So it’s good to give them the same practice routines, although they’re quite different players in terms of skills and temperament.

    “I’ve managed to fuse a bit of tournament flavour into the sessions to fill the vacuum that exists. Besides the results it brings, it can be a lot of fun. One of the routines we’ve worked on is to have Joker and Mohammed work on a drill simultaneous and whoever finishes quicker is the winner.

    “There is little to choose between the two in this, which is very encouraging.”

    “You have to be absolutely focused when you go to the table and you must be prepared to score,” said Barrow.

    “Obviously on the table a key part of your skills set is concentration so I’ve built that into the routines that we’re doing. We’ve been working on this area and so far the results have been positive.

    “Additionally there are a kind of surface skills that you need to bring out of the player and that can be done in any way by building a team spirit, which you could by way of reminding them of a tournament victory or video analysis.

    “That confidence, focus and motivation are things that keep your awareness on through the training camps and we just build on it when we can,” he explained.

    Barrow will be back in the UAE soon to start his fourth year as the national coach and if his enthusiasm and expertise are anything to go by, the game’s future here is in safe hands!