SightRight Was Best Decision of My Life, Says India’s First SR Coach

SightRight is vastly becoming the most talked about training method in modern snooker.

It’s been focused on the mainstream snooker scene and the likes of Ronnie O’Sullivan using it has taken it to new heights as it becomes a global phenomenon.

Here on the Coaching Zone part of SnookerZone, we want to give people, beginners especially, a wide range of information on the different ways they can improve their game. Our mission has been to talk to the coaches and deliver bitesize chunks of info. The site is slowly becoming global as coaches email us wanting to be featured.

One coach is Pranit J Ramchandani, from Chennai, India, and is now training in AV Billiards, Bangalore, India. Ramchandani, 31, has dipped into a few coaches along his snooker odyssey, some of whom we’ve interviewed here already on the Coaching Zone of Snooker Zone.

These include…

• Nic Barrow, creator of the SnookerGym and creator of products such as the Aim Frame (see review here)
• Roger Leighton, a coach who has coached in Asia and Europe…

For Pranit, the journey came to a key path which he says was the best decision he made in his snooker life. That was taking a coaching course in Level 1 with the entrepreneur and inventor of the SightRight methodology Stephen Feeney. Before that, he had coaching courses with Barrow, Leighton and Del Hill.

He told SnookerZone: “A job brought me to Bangalore, and this has been a welcome change. I got an opportunity to practice with the 21-time IBSF world champion and started winning games against him during our sessions. It was a great confidence boost. I started getting calls from players asking me for help with their technique. I took on a few students and it gave me a sense of satisfaction watching them progress. I realized that to build my credibility as a coach I had to get certified and that’s when I found SightRight and this was the best decision of my life. They already had 2 professional world champions produced in the last 4 years and Ronnie O’ Sullivan joining the team just made them bigger. I got in touch with Stephen Feeney and was fortunate enough to get a slot in the coaches training program. I made 2-century breaks right after day 1 of the course and it felt like everything I had done all my life was building up to this ultimate modern day coaching experience.”

Snooker in modern India is growing vastly, and where Pranit is based in Bangalore, there is a top of the range facility with a Star table based on UK snooker academy standards. His highest break is 145.

What is SightRight?

It is simply a methodology on how a player sights a ball and how a player sees a straight shot/angle.

Pranit explains further: “The first thing we look into is how a player Sights the ball since Snooker is a game of extreme precision and has a very small margin for error. We have 4 Sighting tests which will tell us exactly how a player Sights the ball and if we notice a Parallax error, we use the SightRight equipment and work out both their Sighting and Alignment. It is very important for the coach to understand how a player thinks he sees straight to be able to make them understand their mistake. It is similar to a person sitting in the passenger seat and trying to drive a car. It is after this that we start working on their technique and lead them towards their correct sighting line – which is the “Eureka” moment, as Stephen Feeney calls it. Once they are on the correct line we make them pot balls with their eyes closed. After that we put them on specifically designed SightRight Routines to help them understand their strengths and weaknesses and better their technical skills. SightRight is not a quick fix; there are 10 steps within the whole coaching process.”

Pranit adds that there are a few myths to how a player should observe a line of aim.

He added: “Most people will sight a line of aim that they believe they are sighting correctly from the wrong point of observation. The technical term for that is Parallax error. So they think they are seeing straight but they are looking across the line of aim.

“The leading leg does not need to be on the line of aim. It completely depends on the players way of sighting in which the technique is formed following his Sighting. I used to keep my right foot on the line of aim before SightRight and as per SightRight methods that put me completely offline.”

The WIKIPEDIA definition states a Parallax error is…

“Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight, and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines.”

Of course, each player is unique in their sighting observations, but Pranit says common errors that he picks up as a coach, based on his SightRight training are:

“The most common error I find is with their Sighting and almost all of them have a Parallax error. The next common error is how they grip the cue and the way they strike the ball (mostly very hard) and also most of them have a misconception of getting the right leg (or left leg) on the line of aim.”

So, how did Pranit get involved in snooker? He starts off by explaining:

“I watched my uncle play when I was a kid but I was too young at the time to pursue it seriously. Later when I was about 13 years old my friends took me to a Snooker club and I loved the experience so much that I went back the next day all by myself wanting to explore the game in depth. My parents got me a junior membership at the local State association where I watched all the good players practice their game. I watched them every day, trying to figure out my technique and sometimes I would copy their playing style and see if that worked for me. Soon I realized I had to do something about my game.”

He then worked with a local coach who was suggested to him by a friend and when he was 15 he won his first state championship. Following this, he went on to win all the local junior championships for 5 years straight and one day was spotted by the person who has since then been his well-wisher and mentor. He got him a membership at one of the most Prestigious clubs in India called the Madras Cricket Club.

Pranit added: “I played the Junior National championship but never went past the last 16 stage. I realized there was something missing in my basic technique. So I packed my bags and went to the UK to train under Nic Barrow. This was my introduction to the larger Snooker universe. Nic took me to Sheffield where I met and played with players like Ding Junhui, Liang Wenbo, James Wattana and many more and understood the way professionals train and practice.”

Finally, Pranit recounts this:

“I was playing an invitation championship in Malaysia in 2016 where I had a match against a player who had a lot of following but I did not know who he was. I was straight 2-0 down from where I somehow made it 2-2 and went on to win the match with an unbelievable clearance. I was later told that he was the IBSF World Team champion. That was my sweetest victory so far.”

Thanks to Pranit for chatting to SnookerZone and giving readers another insight into snooker and training methods globally.

Here’s where you can find Pranit on social media.

PS: Do you need to see a coach to improve your game? Find and meet a good one below…

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