Jason Fergusson

Strachan, the Stroud based snooker and pool cloth specialist, has been testing a genuine innovation in snooker cloth designed to significantly reduce the number of kicks or poor contacts in the game. World Snooker, in conjunction with the professional sports governing body the WPBSA, has been using the new cloth on all of this season’s professional tournaments and qualifiers.

Strachan Championship No. 10 cloth has featured on the tables at the World Championships for over thirty-six years and offers the professional players the ultimate playing conditions. The cloth has incredible levels of speed, response, touch and control.

The conditions now provided at tournaments are so precise and technically perfect that any chalk particles trapped between two balls can grip on impact. This occasionally results in an irregular contact and this is the phenomena known as a kick.

Stuart Gardiner, the UK Sales Manager for Strachan cloth, Simonis Cloth and Aramith balls, feels that kicks are probably the biggest issue in the modern game causing genuine frustration amongst the professional players.

“We have been working hard to understand and eliminate the causes of kicks for many years now and there have been a lot of theories as to what exactly causes the bad contact. We have explored all of these theories in our search to find a solution and have concluded that there is probably more than one cause. We now strongly believe that the biggest cause of kicks is static electricity which attracts chalk particles to the cue ball. These tiny particles cause the two balls to grip and jump on impact, resulting in a different and unpredictable contact, often leaving the player badly out of position.” said Gardiner. “Anti-KickTM technology stops the balls from carrying charge and holding chalk particles, which in turn leaves the balls clean and greatly reduces the incidence of kicks”.

World Snooker Director and WPBSA Chairman Jason Fergusson added: “Professional tournament conditions are now at a near perfect level with cloth, balls, tables and venues controlled to incredibly high tolerances. Yet the kick remains a huge source of frustration, the new Anti-KickTM cloth that Strachan has developed eliminates the static build up and massively reduces the number of kicks. Despite taking our events to some challenging locations, the new cloth has reduced kicks by as much as 80% whilst maintaining the incredible playing conditions that we are now used to”.

“We at World Snooker are delighted by the work that has been carried out by our partner WSP Textiles, the manufacturer of Strachan, to improve the conditions and to significantly reduce the number of kicks. As an ex-professional player myself I can fully understand the importance of this brilliant new innovation in cloth, it is a massive step forward in the sport as we strive to make conditions as near to perfect as we can for the current top professional players” concluded Ferguson.

Strachan cloth with Anti-KickTM technology will soon be available on the Strachan premium snooker cloth range from our distributors around the world.

Anti-KickTM is a Trademark of WSP Textiles and is patent pending.

Contact us at www.wsptextiles.com