This was followed by a long lapse before Thailand's James Wattana put Asia back on the world map by capturing crown in 1988 in Australia. Then came another sterling show by a Thai cueist, Noppadon Noppachorn, who captured the title at home in 1991.

His compatriot Chuchart Trairatanapradit then opened a trail of what turned out to be a stunning hat-trick of world amateur titles by the Asians by winning the championship in 1993 in Pakistan. This was followed by Pakistan's Mohammad Yousuf success in the 1994 championship in South Africa and Thailand's Sakchai Sim-ngam made it three in a row for the Asians by taking the crown in 1995 in England.

Hong Kong's Marco Fu then took the cue from the others and landed the world amateur championship title in 1997 in Zimbabwe.

However, apart from James Wattana and Marco Fu, none of them have been able to convert their successes on the amateur level into stardom in the highly competitive professional world.

The objective of the "World Snooker - Asian Centre of Excellence" is to help Asian countries improve their standards by training their coaches, players and referees so that the number world-class Asian players on the World Snooker Main Tour could rise in the future.

Mr Sindhu Pulsirivong, President of the Asian Confederation of Billiards Sports, is attaching a lot of importance to the training of coaches in this new project as they could prove to be valuable source of imparting snooker knowledge to the young players upon their return to their respective countries.

The syllabuses for all these training programs have been carefully worked out by the Youth and Development Department of World Snooker and services of WS professional coaches will be acquired to carry out different courses at the "World Snooker - Asian Centre of Excellence".