He has been in the top fight for over a decade now and Hong Kong's new star player Marco Fu, currently ranked Number 17 in the world, has added to the strength of the Asians playing at the top level.

However, the speed at which Asia has produced these world-class stars has not been able to keep with that of the British Isles with the reasons being lack of proper nurturing grounds for the up-and-coming players.

The idea of having a "Centre of Excellence" to help the Asian countries improve their standard of their snooker players, coaches and referees first came into being when a couple of years ago when some World Snooker officials mentioned the plan of initiating such an scheme in the United Kingdom to Mr Sindhu Pulsirivong, President of The Snooker Association of Thailand, at a ranking tournament in China. He discussed the possibility o having the same provision for Asia with the World Snooker officials and since taking over the presidency of the Asian Confederation of Billiards Sports from Mr Ali Asghar Valika of Pakistan on July 13, 2000, Mr Sindhu devoted himself to realising this long-standing Asian dream.

Mr Sindhu has worked closely with World Snooker, the world professional snooker governing body, ever since and his efforts resulted in a financial support worth 50,000 pounds sterling per year for a period of no less than three years for the inception and running of the "World Snooker - Centre of Excellence".