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
First Published: Tuesday, September 15, 2009, 16:19