National Billiards & Snooker C`ship starts in Agra

Country`s top cueists, including world professional billiards champions Pankaj Advani, Geet Sethi, Ashok Shandilya and Devendra Joshi, will be seen in action in the Indian National Billiards and Snooker Championship.

Agra: Country`s top cueists, including world professional billiards champions Pankaj Advani, Geet Sethi,

Ashok Shandilya and Devendra Joshi, will be seen in action in the main draw of the Indian National Billiards and Snooker Championship starting on Sunday. The three-week-long tournament to be played till October 4 started yesterday at Hotel Clarks Shiraz here with the sub-junior section matches in the snooker discipline and the qualifying for the junior billiards event. The main draw of the billiard competition will be held from September 20-26, while Snooker main draw is schedule for September 28-October 4. Sixty matches were played yesterday on the green baize, including that of the defending champion in the sub-juniors billiards category Dhwaj Haria. A record number of 643 entries have been accepted for the prestigious event which is being organised by the Agra Unit of the UP Billiards and Snooker Association (UPBSA). "All the leading cueists of the country like Pankaj Advani, Geet Sethi, Dhruv Sitwala, Devender Joshi, Ashok Shandilya, Rupesh Shah, Alok Kumar, Yasin Merchant, Manan Chandra and Rafat Habib besides other other young cueists will be seen in action during the event," Chief coordinator of the tournament IS Malik said. Haria started his campaign in style thrashing Utpal Goel of Madhya Pradesh 288-78 and then in a stirring display of the three balls art, beat Sunny Jhadav 329-66 in an hour match. In another match, local-lad Malkeet Singh outclassed C Mani Satwick of Andhra Pradesh 262-64 to move up into the next round. However, another local hope Vivek Nichwani was not so lucky as he went down to Delhi`s Rishit Jain 288-177. Karnataka`s Mundir Sherazi brushed aside Sahil Sharma of Punjab 368-90, posting the highest score of the day. Ketan Chawla of MP had to strain hard to get the better of Aashiq of Tamil Nadu 233-116, while another local Siddharth Mehra showed his mettle as he downed Laxman Rawat of Delhi 213-174 in a closely-contested match. Bureau Report