Doha: International Billiards and Snooker Federation (IBSF), chaired by Mubarak Al Khayarin, has decided to stage the World Snooker Team Cup on an annual basis in Qatar as the host and proposing country.
The decision was made on the sidelines of the IBSF general assembly meeting that was held Wednesday in Doha.
The federation said in a statement that Qatar was behind the idea of World Snooker Team Cup at the level of national teams. Hence, the statement added, the federation decided that Doha would host the tournament on an annual basis and to change its name to the Qatar Open Snooker Team Cup.
The tournament will take place in the last week of February and the first week of March with IBSF sponsoring the event.
IBSF said the general assembly decided to replace China with Qatar as host of the men’s world championship in the event the former withdraws from staging the event on time. Snooker’s U21 world championship will be staged in Egypt instead of India, IBSF added.
The federation noted that the general assembly agreed that the Asian and international ranking championships be held over three stages in Qatar, India and China between September and October.
The IBSF general assembly also addressed the issue of the parallel federation, which calls itself the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association. The meeting proposed a number of steps to take in the coming period in order to limit the ambitions of that body that seeks to control the activities of IBSF.
