KARACHI: The Punjab Billiards and Snooker Association has shown interest to stage next year's National Snooker Championship in Lahore, the Pakistan Billiards and Snooker Association (PBSA) Chief Alamgir Shaikh said on Wednesday.

He said the newly installed President of Punjab Naveed Ahmed, who attended the recently held Managing Committee meeting of PBSA, has communicated to the national association their keenness to hold the nationals in Lahore.

He said to maintain the quality and competitiveness they wanted the nationals to contested among the top 32 players of the country.

He said as per the tradition the winner and runner-up will represent Pakistan in the Asian Snooker Championship to be held in Beijing (China) in May 2009. Alamgir Shaikh maintained that they would be staging the National and National Junior Snooker in the first two months in 2009.

He expressed the hope that a dispute with the players will be settled once they are offered Central Contracts by PBSA for the year 2009.

The PBSA is planning to pay the top six to eight cueists money to the tune of Rs 5,000 to 10,000 per month according to their national ranking every quarter.