sounds funny but quite interesting

[bipra]

I have a question that came up the other day while chatting with snooker mates (purely theoretical - it didn't all actually happen):

It's about commiting a fault by touching a ball with something else than the cue (usually the hand or arm, or the player's clothes). Would it be considered as a fault to touch a ball extremely slightly, for instance with one's hair or with a little wire coming out of the player's shirt? (so not with the actual skin or cloth itself).

Also - and that one already happened to one of my mates (well, he said): what if the ball is touched by some fluid (not to mention: blood - or anything else coming out of the player's nose, sometimes at great pace)?

I know this sounds funny but quite interesting I guess...

 

[Boro Nut]

I have a question that came up the other day while chatting with snooker mates (purely theoretical - it didn't all actually happen):

It's about commiting a fault by touching a ball with something else than the cue (usually the hand or arm, or the player's clothes). Would it be considered as a fault to touch a ball extremely slightly, for instance with one's hair or with a little wire coming out of the player's shirt? (so not with the actual skin or cloth itself).

Yes. This is a very common foul enforced at all levels of the game, not just professionals. You have to be very careful of baggy clothes for this reason. Causing a ball in play to be touched by anything other than the tip of the cue when legally striking it as part of the stroke is a foul.

Also - and that one already happened to one of my mates (well, he said): what if the ball is touched by some fluid (not to mention: blood - or anything else coming out of the player's nose, sometimes at great pace)?

I don't know for sure, but my instinct would be no. It isn't a foul if the head falls off the rest causing you to foul for instance, because it's an agency beyond your control, so something falling off you would be just as beyond your control. I'd even include a sneeze which was violent enough to disturb the balls. I'd just replace them without penalty. But if you deliberately blew on them and they moved I would call a foul.

Boro Nut