The UK Carrom Club

		The UK Carrom Club Introduction Newsletter Joining Background Bulletins from The UKCC Please follow these links for latest news releases from The UKCC; June 1997 Update An Introduction The UK Carrom Club was formed by carrom playing enthusiasts in 1986. Members range from 3 years old to over 60, players of all levels of skill from absolute novices to world class players. Carrom is a game of considerable history and culture: it is known and played the world over in different styles and at different levels. The Carrom Club organises leagues in London, Croydon, East Sussex, Kent, Crawley, Oxford, Bristol and Berkshire. League players meet monthly and the emphasis is on learning and developing skill and understanding of the game as well as encouraging a relaxed approach to this fast growing leisure pursuit. New leagues are formed regularly and there are facilities available for helping new leagues get established throughout the UK. Every year UKCC organise, in addition to leagues, the National Carrom Tournament at Covent Garden as well as organising open competitions at various events in the UK. UKCC co-operates with the International Carrom Federation and feeds members with details of international events as they arise. Our Newsletter Members receive bimonthly four or six page newsletters as well as additional mailings regarding carrom events. The newsletter welcomes enquiries and offers assistance on any aspect of the game. Membership is Ł6.00 per year and new members receive a 23 page rule booklet giving many variations on rules. We welcome your support! The newsletter is informative and covers a wide number of topics that will surprise and inform. Some examples or articles included in a recent edition are; Silver Streek: Play with An Outlaw The pros and cons of alternative strikers. Who's Playing Where A run down of regular meetings of UK Carrom Club players. CarromGuru Seeven Paten's insight into carrom mastery Leagues Who's on top of which league? Example of Newsletter Click above to see extracts from recent newsletter. How To Join *To join The UKCC (Please note there is a Ł6.00/annum membership fee), please complete and submit the form below, or see our other contact details on our Home Page.* Name: Address 1: Address 2: Address 3: County/State: Country: Post Code/Zip: Tel: Fax: E-mail: If you want to, please use the following area for any message you want to send; A More Detailed Background The UK Carrom Club has had excess of 14,000 supporters and registered players past and present, some of whom remain as members after their initial enthusiasm. The percentage of Asians roughly equals the percentage in the population at large. Perhaps Asians are more familiar with the game than others, but that may not be so. Millions have travelled and many of those see carrom. Not only do they see it in Asia but also in the Middle and Near East and also in South America. KARUM continues the traditions of carrom: varying styles of play and rules seeking to accommodate the differences that players have grown accustomed to in their own traditions. The Carrom Club encourages the use of resin/ceramic pieces, no backshots and allows women to qualify alongside men, putting into real practice the ideal of the "carromwoman" being implied by the "carroman". The ICF do not allow women to play alongside men, except in mixed doubles. They use wooden pieces and allow backshots. "Disgusted" was the comment of the UKCC member who was runner up in a London Federation style competition on the use of backshots: but as we know there are many competing styles. It does indicate the degree of fervour that can be present in this game. Our runner up was a woman who had travelled from the south of England to play in the "third London Open " competition with rules complying with ICF guidelines. That meant that as a woman she could only play with the women. It only just happened. After the organisers asked every woman in the place if they wanted to play the competition ended up with three women players, hardly a contest of note in terms of numbers. Our player had more competition at home! The response from Carrom Club members to the ICF rules for the use of wooden pieces, backshots, powder and segregation has been luke warm. This is also true of many Asian players who, in common with their European carrom partners, think that backshots remove a substantial area of skill and strategy from the game. Backshots are not easy but they are always easier than rebounds. Bangaru Babu, General Secretary of the ICF told me that backshots were introduced in Indian tournaments in 1956 to speed up games. It seems implicit that this removed an aspect of the game, in effect making it easier for a player to win quickly. It is surprising because in UKCC tournaments around 70 full games are played in one day on as few as sixteen boards. Players that prefer resin/ceramic pieces do so because they have a more certain feel for complex shots such as multiple cannons, rebound shots and tactical shots. Most important is their flatness and roundness, something a wooden piece lacks unless it is hand turned, something which is expensive, time consuming and inaccessible to most. For the widest appeal, resin/ceramic pieces have been a great success. As for powder, I stopped using that when I came to England: it's fine all over my brother's floor in Bombay because it's marble and easily wiped. Most people have carpets in England and boric acid [or potato starch for that matter] is rarely invited! The advent of the ICF doesn't mean any more controversy than there already exists. What is said about rules or where the authority comes from will not move you if your father and his father before him played backshots: you will always believe backshots to be essential to carrom. For my part I prefer to think of the elusive carrom master who needs no rules. Begin and then clear the board, an unlikely event except in the rarest of meetings between old hands. What the advent of an international carrom body has done is to focus attention on differences. Previously these differences did not matter much to anyone. If a style of play was not familiar it was a variation. Now it is sought to remove the variations by encouraging everyone to play in one way. The return of the universal language. It is, sadly, in keeping with the way in which the world is travelling: fewer languages exist each year as native speakers of rare or local languages die without leaving successors; fewer and fewer species exist on the planet as natural habitats are removed. All this is in the pursuit of progress. In the world which develops an understanding of green politics or Earth consciousness it is increasingly familiar to more and more of us. Perhaps it's no surprise that it is also happening in the world of carrom: remove the old variations, in effect, reduce the species from many to one. Fear not, the broad minded carrom player has much support to continue the diversity of traditions. The International Carrom Federation staged a "World Cup" in London in April 1992 Keen Carrom players the world over should have been ensuring they had the skill and expertise necessary to compete with the world's best. Sadly, poor publicity failed to attract the attention expected of a world event. At that time it was probably the Indians or Sri Lankans who were the world's best but tournaments are played over a short time and in difficult conditions. Even so, the Indians won but no one was really much the wiser: the concept of an audience had been largely ignored as had the possibility of involving the press although the absence of any serious press recognition of carrom is a good thing, confirming its special status. The ICF was and remains a relative newcomer on the carrom scene and its motives are familiar to anyone who has had contact with sporting bodies. They need to raise money and raise consciousness of the matter in hand. Here's where one difficulty lies. Carrom is not, as such, a sport although the ICF are keen to have it recognised as such. It involves no physical activity except the movement of the backside on a chair and the movement of one or two fingers and possibly a thumb if you like to play it easy. In fact there are players who still play the "no cheek to leave the stool" rule, which means exactly what it says: when playing a stroke both buttocks must remain firmly planted on the stool. More people come across carrom in Nepal or Singapore, being played in clubs or on the streets than they do from the ICF's moves to make the game universal. The experience of the ICF's first world cup held in the Gandhi stadium in Delhi in 1990 is an example. Reputedly the world's best carrom players gathered to play in a huge indoor stadium capable of seating thousands. Thousands might have been interested, but only dozens turned up to attend, swallowed up by the vastness of the auditorium and several hundred feet away from those little carromen whizzing around the board. In England, by contrast, carrom is played in public places where it draws attention albeit as a curiosity. There is a village green in East Sussex where the world's best tiddlywinks players have assembled year after year for over a century to play for titles and acclaim. Few outsiders know about it but those who do love it and those who come across it by accident are enthralled. It is the rarity of the spectacle that gives it the special quality rather than the spectacle itself. The UK Carrom club has been organising tournaments in England since 1986. Generally they have been modest affairs with the first UK Carrom Club National tournament attracting only 30 players. Since the first was played in a small room in Hammersmith things have grown, naturally, slowly, despite enormous enthusiasm from thousands of players and spectators over the years. In October 1992 the 7th UKCC National Tournament attracted some 259 entrants over the course of 3 separate events with the final being held in London's Covent Garden with 16 tournament boards in play. Since 1987 there have been regular National Tournaments and meeting held in England at every level of skill. The emphasis is on teaching and offering insights into various styles of play as much as it is on discovering who has the stomach and the nerve for competitive play. As an example of what can be achieved in a short space of time, the 1992 UKCC National Champion was Duncan Haysom who has been playing competition carrom for only 3 years. By contrast, former Club champion (1990, 1991) Raj Thakrar has been playing since childhood and maintains he has still to reach his peak. Despite being beaten in 1992, 1993 and 1994 he remains the number 1 ranked player. He is the most consistently difficult player to beat and continues to attract well deserved acclaim with his often spectacular and flamboyant style of play. In case there was any doubt Raj Thakrar is the 1994/1995 Carrom Club league champion having an unbeaten record in 21 games against the country's best known players. Abdul Khan was the runner-up in 1992: a natural player who, before the tournament had not played carrom for several years. His natural skill allowed him to win the National Tournament in 1993 and again be the runner up in 1994. His style is measured and deliberate with stunning accuracy and consistency. Both Mark Thomas and Elvis Barry won UKCC Open Competitions in 1992. Elvis Barry joined the UKCC in 1992 adding some of the unmistakable Mauritian style to carrom play. Undoubtedly Mark Thomas proved to be the most tenacious of Open competitors during the period 1990-1993. He won a total of three open events. Both Mark Thomas and Elvis Barry are highly rated by Raj Thakrar since both have beaten him in open conditions. Other notable names in the UK carrom circuit are consistently playing in tournaments and competitions. Richard White was the first winner of the UK Carrom Club's League in 1993; Tim Kirkby and Stephen Daws have been consistently contending for some years with Kirkby beating Abdul Khan in 1994 for the national tittle. There is Nasrul Islam, undoubtedly the best wooden pieces and backshots player in the country who is one of the very few federation style players who has entered a non federation style tournament: he won it! Paula Davidson is without question the best female player who has regularly beaten all the best male players who has entered federation style tournaments just to show they can be won but having made her point will no longer unless the segregation is ended. There are plenty of young players who are in regular practice and who are able to compete with the best. Jonathon Smith has been, since about 1991 been the most difficult under 16 to beat. He was introduced to carrom in about 1988. There are too many more to mention, but Jonathon deserves mention because of his tenacity and tactical insight. The grass roots growth of carrom is a pleasure for parents and teachers to watch. Not only does it involve play and learning about the game but also the opportunity to understand broader matters. The Open Competitions held by the UKCC are difficult for a defending champion. Anyone who has attended the Lambeth Mela, Europe's biggest Indian festival, can testify to the long queues of aspiring champions who await their turn to play the defending champion. Usually it is Raj who plays them all, starting at about ten in the morning and finishing around six or seven in the evening having played some seventy games. Inevitably he loses games and points after such an arduous day. It is the UKCC's method of searching out new talent and has worked well over the years. All of the Club's top 32 players in 1992 had entered an open competition at some stage over the years and had been "discovered" in this way. The Club continues to hold these opens-usually three each year, with the best players being eligible for the National Tournament. Any aspiring entrants for tournaments and competitions are welcomed and encouraged, regardless of style of play. Copyright 1997, Carrom Club and/or it's suppliers, All Rights Reserved Last Update 19.03.97

The UK Carrom Club

Bulletins from The UKCC
Please follow these links for latest news releases from The UKCC;

June 1997 Update

An Introduction
Pen and Ink Graphic

The UK Carrom Club was formed by carrom playing enthusiasts in 1986. Members range from 3 years old to over 60, players of all levels of skill from absolute novices to world class players. Carrom is a game of considerable history and culture: it is known and played the world over in different styles and at different levels.

The Carrom Club organises leagues in London, Croydon, East Sussex, Kent, Crawley, Oxford, Bristol and Berkshire.

League players meet monthly and the emphasis is on learning and developing skill and understanding of the game as well as encouraging a relaxed approach to this fast growing leisure pursuit. New leagues are formed regularly and there are facilities available for helping new leagues get established throughout the UK.

Every year UKCC organise, in addition to leagues, the National Carrom Tournament at Covent Garden as well as organising open competitions at various events in the UK. UKCC co-operates with the International Carrom Federation and feeds members with details of international events as they arise.

Our Newsletter
Members receive bimonthly four or six page newsletters as well as additional mailings regarding carrom events. The newsletter welcomes enquiries and offers assistance on any aspect of the game. Membership is Ł6.00 per year and new members receive a 23 page rule booklet giving many variations on rules. We welcome your support!

The newsletter is informative and covers a wide number of topics that will surprise and inform. Some examples or articles included in a recent edition are;

Silver Streek: Play with An Outlaw
The pros and cons of alternative strikers.
Who's Playing Where
A run down of regular meetings of UK Carrom Club players.
CarromGuru
Seeven Paten's insight into carrom mastery
Leagues
Who's on top of which league?
Example of Newsletter
Click above to see extracts from recent newsletter.

How To Join

To join The UKCC (Please note there is a Ł6.00/annum membership fee), please complete and submit the form below, or see our other contact details on our Home Page.

Name:

Address 1:

Address 2:

Address 3:

County/State:

Country:

Post Code/Zip:

Tel:

Fax:

E-mail:

If you want to, please use the following area
for any message you want to send;

A More Detailed Background

The UK Carrom Club has had excess of 14,000 supporters and registered players past and present, some of whom remain as members after their initial enthusiasm. The percentage of Asians roughly equals the percentage in the population at large. Perhaps Asians are more familiar with the game than others, but that may not be so. Millions have travelled and many of those see carrom. Not only do they see it in Asia but also in the Middle and Near East and also in South America. KARUM continues the traditions of carrom: varying styles of play and rules seeking to accommodate the differences that players have grown accustomed to in their own traditions.

The Carrom Club encourages the use of resin/ceramic pieces, no backshots and allows women to qualify alongside men, putting into real practice the ideal of the "carromwoman" being implied by the "carroman". The ICF do not allow women to play alongside men, except in mixed doubles. They use wooden pieces and allow backshots. "Disgusted" was the comment of the UKCC member who was runner up in a London Federation style competition on the use of backshots: but as we know there are many competing styles. It does indicate the degree of fervour that can be present in this game. Our runner up was a woman who had travelled from the south of England to play in the "third London Open " competition with rules complying with ICF guidelines. That meant that as a woman she could only play with the women. It only just happened. After the organisers asked every woman in the place if they wanted to play the competition ended up with three women players, hardly a contest of note in terms of numbers. Our player had more competition at home!

The response from Carrom Club members to the ICF rules for the use of wooden pieces, backshots, powder and segregation has been luke warm. This is also true of many Asian players who, in common with their European carrom partners, think that backshots remove a substantial area of skill and strategy from the game. Backshots are not easy but they are always easier than rebounds. Bangaru Babu, General Secretary of the ICF told me that backshots were introduced in Indian tournaments in 1956 to speed up games. It seems implicit that this removed an aspect of the game, in effect making it easier for a player to win quickly. It is surprising because in UKCC tournaments around 70 full games are played in one day on as few as sixteen boards. Players that prefer resin/ceramic pieces do so because they have a more certain feel for complex shots such as multiple cannons, rebound shots and tactical shots. Most important is their flatness and roundness, something a wooden piece lacks unless it is hand turned, something which is expensive, time consuming and inaccessible to most. For the widest appeal, resin/ceramic pieces have been a great success. As for powder, I stopped using that when I came to England: it's fine all over my brother's floor in Bombay because it's marble and easily wiped. Most people have carpets in England and boric acid [or potato starch for that matter] is rarely invited!

The advent of the ICF doesn't mean any more controversy than there already exists. What is said about rules or where the authority comes from will not move you if your father and his father before him played backshots: you will always believe backshots to be essential to carrom. For my part I prefer to think of the elusive carrom master who needs no rules. Begin and then clear the board, an unlikely event except in the rarest of meetings between old hands. What the advent of an international carrom body has done is to focus attention on differences. Previously these differences did not matter much to anyone. If a style of play was not familiar it was a variation. Now it is sought to remove the variations by encouraging everyone to play in one way. The return of the universal language. It is, sadly, in keeping with the way in which the world is travelling: fewer languages exist each year as native speakers of rare or local languages die without leaving successors; fewer and fewer species exist on the planet as natural habitats are removed. All this is in the pursuit of progress. In the world which develops an understanding of green politics or Earth consciousness it is increasingly familiar to more and more of us. Perhaps it's no surprise that it is also happening in the world of carrom: remove the old variations, in effect, reduce the species from many to one. Fear not, the broad minded carrom player has much support to continue the diversity of traditions.

The International Carrom Federation staged a "World Cup" in London in April 1992 Keen Carrom players the world over should have been ensuring they had the skill and expertise necessary to compete with the world's best. Sadly, poor publicity failed to attract the attention expected of a world event. At that time it was probably the Indians or Sri Lankans who were the world's best but tournaments are played over a short time and in difficult conditions. Even so, the Indians won but no one was really much the wiser: the concept of an audience had been largely ignored as had the possibility of involving the press although the absence of any serious press recognition of carrom is a good thing, confirming its special status.

The ICF was and remains a relative newcomer on the carrom scene and its motives are familiar to anyone who has had contact with sporting bodies. They need to raise money and raise consciousness of the matter in hand. Here's where one difficulty lies. Carrom is not, as such, a sport although the ICF are keen to have it recognised as such. It involves no physical activity except the movement of the backside on a chair and the movement of one or two fingers and possibly a thumb if you like to play it easy. In fact there are players who still play the "no cheek to leave the stool" rule, which means exactly what it says: when playing a stroke both buttocks must remain firmly planted on the stool.

More people come across carrom in Nepal or Singapore, being played in clubs or on the streets than they do from the ICF's moves to make the game universal. The experience of the ICF's first world cup held in the Gandhi stadium in Delhi in 1990 is an example. Reputedly the world's best carrom players gathered to play in a huge indoor stadium capable of seating thousands. Thousands might have been interested, but only dozens turned up to attend, swallowed up by the vastness of the auditorium and several hundred feet away from those little carromen whizzing around the board. In England, by contrast, carrom is played in public places where it draws attention albeit as a curiosity. There is a village green in East Sussex where the world's best tiddlywinks players have assembled year after year for over a century to play for titles and acclaim. Few outsiders know about it but those who do love it and those who come across it by accident are enthralled. It is the rarity of the spectacle that gives it the special quality rather than the spectacle itself.

The UK Carrom club has been organising tournaments in England since 1986. Generally they have been modest affairs with the first UK Carrom Club National tournament attracting only 30 players. Since the first was played in a small room in Hammersmith things have grown, naturally, slowly, despite enormous enthusiasm from thousands of players and spectators over the years. In October 1992 the 7th UKCC National Tournament attracted some 259 entrants over the course of 3 separate events with the final being held in London's Covent Garden with 16 tournament boards in play. Since 1987 there have been regular National Tournaments and meeting held in England at every level of skill. The emphasis is on teaching and offering insights into various styles of play as much as it is on discovering who has the stomach and the nerve for competitive play.

As an example of what can be achieved in a short space of time, the 1992 UKCC National Champion was Duncan Haysom who has been playing competition carrom for only 3 years. By contrast, former Club champion (1990, 1991) Raj Thakrar has been playing since childhood and maintains he has still to reach his peak. Despite being beaten in 1992, 1993 and 1994 he remains the number 1 ranked player. He is the most consistently difficult player to beat and continues to attract well deserved acclaim with his often spectacular and flamboyant style of play. In case there was any doubt Raj Thakrar is the 1994/1995 Carrom Club league champion having an unbeaten record in 21 games against the country's best known players.

Abdul Khan was the runner-up in 1992: a natural player who, before the tournament had not played carrom for several years. His natural skill allowed him to win the National Tournament in 1993 and again be the runner up in 1994. His style is measured and deliberate with stunning accuracy and consistency.

Both Mark Thomas and Elvis Barry won UKCC Open Competitions in 1992. Elvis Barry joined the UKCC in 1992 adding some of the unmistakable Mauritian style to carrom play. Undoubtedly Mark Thomas proved to be the most tenacious of Open competitors during the period 1990-1993. He won a total of three open events. Both Mark Thomas and Elvis Barry are highly rated by Raj Thakrar since both have beaten him in open conditions. Other notable names in the UK carrom circuit are consistently playing in tournaments and competitions. Richard White was the first winner of the UK Carrom Club's League in 1993; Tim Kirkby and Stephen Daws have been consistently contending for some years with Kirkby beating Abdul Khan in 1994 for the national tittle. There is Nasrul Islam, undoubtedly the best wooden pieces and backshots player in the country who is one of the very few federation style players who has entered a non federation style tournament: he won it! Paula Davidson is without question the best female player who has regularly beaten all the best male players who has entered federation style tournaments just to show they can be won but having made her point will no longer unless the segregation is ended.

There are plenty of young players who are in regular practice and who are able to compete with the best. Jonathon Smith has been, since about 1991 been the most difficult under 16 to beat. He was introduced to carrom in about 1988. There are too many more to mention, but Jonathon deserves mention because of his tenacity and tactical insight. The grass roots growth of carrom is a pleasure for parents and teachers to watch. Not only does it involve play and learning about the game but also the opportunity to understand broader matters.

The Open Competitions held by the UKCC are difficult for a defending champion. Anyone who has attended the Lambeth Mela, Europe's biggest Indian festival, can testify to the long queues of aspiring champions who await their turn to play the defending champion. Usually it is Raj who plays them all, starting at about ten in the morning and finishing around six or seven in the evening having played some seventy games. Inevitably he loses games and points after such an arduous day. It is the UKCC's method of searching out new talent and has worked well over the years. All of the Club's top 32 players in 1992 had entered an open competition at some stage over the years and had been "discovered" in this way.

The Club continues to hold these opens-usually three each year, with the best players being eligible for the National Tournament. Any aspiring entrants for tournaments and competitions are welcomed and encouraged, regardless of style of play.