Mumbai: Abhimanyu Gandhi of Gujarat created the biggest flutter on a day of upsets when he shocked fancied R Girish of Railways in the qualifying rounds of the Ekta World Shyam Shroff Memorial All India Open Invitation Snooker Tournament at the Khar Gymkhana on Thursday.
Gandhi rallied from a 1-3 deficit to beat Girish 54-67 61-48 39-71 9-74 68-22 63-49 78-66 in a thrilling best-of-seven frames contest and then followed it up with a 4-0 rout of Nishad Chowgule (Pune) to advance to the quarter finals of the qualifying stage. Chowgule had put out Aditya Agarwal of Mumbai 4-3.
In other upsets of the day, lucky loser Arun Agrawal of Maharashtra beat Dhruv Sitwala of ONGC in the pre-quarters, while Santosh Gulwadi overcame Harish Mirchandani in the last 32 in an all-Maharashtra tie.
The other significant winners were Balaji Reddy of Karnataka, Rafath Habib of Railways, Shahbaz Khan of Bharat Petroleum and Roshan Mirchandani of Maharashtra, who entered the quarter-finals of the qualifiers.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, January 06, 2011, 18:31