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National Billiards & Snooker Championship
The Kotla Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy Indoor Stadium
Yousuf Guda - Hyderabad
:: Report - 10.12.2007 ::
by CSI Correspondent
Isthmit Singh Malik
Hyderabad: 11.12.2007 - The top cueists continued to impress in the Seniors section of the 2007 National billiards & snooker championship in KotlaVijaya Bhaskar Reddy Indoor Stadium here on Monday with Petroleum Sports Promotion Board's Devendra Joshi and Railways Ashok Shandilya stealing the honours of the day with sterling performances.
Ashok defeated Nakul Patel by a whopping 889-121 points while Joshi was all poise and grace in his drubbing of Orissa's Ahsan ul Haque by 900-90 points in the 90 minute encounters of the billiards league. B. Bhaskar of Karnatka won a vital victory over PSPB 's Shabaz Adil Khan by 392-308 points while Nittin Kohli of Uttar Pradesh emphatically beat PSPB"S Manan Chandra by 403-341 points to keep his hopes alive of qualifying for the knock-out phase.
UP champion, Raghoo Sinha made sure of making it to the last sixteen knock-out by beating Delhi's Sandeep Gulati by 485-246 points in a consistent display of pure billiards game.I.V. Rajiv beat Prem Prakash by 422-386 points in a keenly contested tie in another group match whereas Saurav Kothari of PSPB beat hisKolkatamate Shakeel Ahmad in another close match by 287-256 points.
However, it was the match between the World billiardschamp, Pankaj Advani and the young challenger from the Railways Kamal Chawlawhich enthralled the spectators. Kamal traded breaks with breaks almost upto the last before Pankaj finally pulledaway in the last 20 minutes of the game to win the tense but high quality match.
In the Ladies Snooker section, Ashwani Puranik kept herslate clean with a fine straight frames victory over Aakansha Singh by 58-29 and 53-24 points while HeenaKhandelwal wasa bit too strong for young Keerat Bhandal of Delhi. The Mumbai lady winning in straight frames by 57-20 and 66-12 points. Nevertheless the promising Keerat caught the eye when she sportingly owned up to a foul brushing the black with her sleeve when the referee and Heena as well had not spotted the foul. For this act she received a round of applause from the discerning spectators keenly watching the match.
In the Sub-Juniors section in snooker, UP cxhampion Malkeet Singh hadmixed luck as he surprised the much fancied Raunak Vazirani of Gujarat by 37-44, %2-27 and 64-57 points but crashed out in the very next round to Samarjeet of Tamil Nadu who beat him by 55-25 and 63-43 points. The challenge of Uttar Pradesh ended when their remaining players Amandeep Singh lost to Mundir Sherazi of Karnatka by 30-67 and 36-73 points whereas Udit Sharma lost to Rovin D'Souza of Maharashtra by 30-62 and 06-56 points.