In March 2022, a sixteen-year-old from Lahore beat Iran’s Amir Sarkhosh 6–5 in the final of the IBSF World Snooker Championship. He had already knocked out Muhammad Asif on the way, a two-time world champion and a fellow Pakistani.
Asked about that match afterwards, Ahsan Ramzan did not talk about the upset. “It was an honour to face him,” he said, “as he was a Pakistani player.”
The cue his father hit him with
Ahsan lost his mother when he was very young. His father raised him, and for a long time his father wanted nothing to do with snooker.
Sent out to buy milk one day, the boy went to a billiard club instead. When his father found him there, he beat him with a cue.
The same man later became the reason he kept playing. When his father was dying, four years before the world title, he did not let his son sit at the bedside. He sent him to a national championship instead.
“That was not less than doomsday for me,” Ahsan said of losing him.
An hour there, an hour back
After his father’s death, his brothers put three options in front of him. Join the family poultry business. Go back to his studies. Or keep playing snooker and lose their financial support.
He chose snooker. He moved to Lahore, and walked an hour to the table and an hour home again.
“Any player who doesn’t have hunger, I believe he can do nothing,” he said. “I have immense hunger.”
What he did with the trophy
He was born on 14 August 2005, Pakistan’s Independence Day. He won a world championship at sixteen, one of the youngest players ever to do it.
When he was asked what the win meant, he did not describe it as a beginning or a breakthrough.
“If my parents were alive today, I would have given them the trophy,” he said. “Now, I will put this trophy on their graves.”
Since then
He is a two-time Asian Under-21 champion. The first came in 2023, beating Iran’s Milad Pourali Darehchi 5–2, in a year that also brought a runner-up finish at the IBSF 6-Reds World Championship. He had represented Pakistan at the 2022 World Games in Birmingham the season before.
In 2024 he lost the Asian Under-21 final to another Pakistani, Muhammad Hasnain Akhtar, 3–4. In 2026 he took the title back.
He is twenty now. Snooker in Pakistan runs on club tables, small purses and players who fund themselves. He has spent four years at the top of it.
Why we wrote this
Pakistan has produced world champions in snooker for decades and most people here could not name one. Ahsan Ramzan won a world title at sixteen after being told to choose between the sport and his family’s support, and he is still playing.
At SmashNRun we build sportswear in Pakistan, for people who train here. Writing about the athletes doing that work is part of the same idea.
Made in Pakistan
What we make
SmashNRun builds sportswear and sports gear in Pakistan, for people who actually train here. Premium make, priced so you can wear it hard.
