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Dr. Kaukab Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza, the last surviving Great Grandson of Wajid Ali Shah and Begum Hazrat Mahal, died at Peerless Hospital, Calcutta, at 1625 hours on this Sunday, 13th September 2020. He was 87. About a week ago he had tested positive for Covid-19. He is survived by his wife, two sons, and four daughters.

Also known as Dr. M. Kaukub, he used to be a popular figure in the Billiards & Snooker fraternity for a long time. He was the Founder-Secretary of The Billiards & Snooker Federation of India, The West Bengal Billiards Association, and also The Uttar Pradesh Billiards & Snooker Association.

Dr. Kaukab was a leading organizer and also the Chief Referee of the First World Snooker Championship held at the iconic Great Eastern Hotel in Calcutta in 1963-64. The M. M. Baig Trophy of that World event, which later came to be recognized as the IBSF World Snooker Championship, was designed by him and to this day remains the prestigious rolling trophy of the World Championship. It was won by O.B. Agarwal once, and then by Pankaj Advani a number of times.

Apart from that pioneering first World Snooker Championship, he organized many National and International events at the Great Eastern Hotel. And he remained a key figure of the National Billiards & Snooker Championship till it left it's permanent home, the Palm Court of the Great Eastern Hotel, in the seventies to go around the country. And even then, he organized the Nationals once in Aligarh Muslim University where he had joined as a professor in Urdu.

He had also taken out a pioneering Billiards magazine, The Baulkline, in the 1970s.

Under his tutelage, his daughter Manzilat Fatima played the Junior National Snooker Championship in 1980 in Ahmedabad and became the first female ever to participate in the National Snooker Championship.

His son Irfan Ali Mirza is presently an International Referee and TV commentator.

In the Agra Nationals in 2009, he was honoured by the UPBSA for his lifetime services to the games of Billiards & Snooker.
 

West Bengal :: 14 September 2020