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National Billiards & Snooker Championship
The Kotla Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy Indoor Stadium
Yousuf Guda - Hyderabad
:: Report - 19.12.2007 ::
by CSI Correspondent
Isthmit Singh Malik
Hyderabad: 17.12.2007 - It was the day of the Andhra cueists on Wednesday here at the Kotla Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy Indoor stadium, Yuosufguda in the 2007 National billiards & snooker championship in the Juniors snooker qualifying section while in the Seniors snooker main championships there were some upsets too in the midst of good performances by the hosts players.
Lucky Vatnani of Andhra had to put his best foot forward before he could get the better of Gujarat player, Raunaq Vazirani in a match between two talented youngsters before Lucky won by 62-24, 31-55, 69-43 and 79-09 points. Another local player, a stalwart at that, K. Someshwar Rao pipped Dhruv Sitwala of PSPB to the post as he managed to win the closely contested match by 58-01, 49-27, 61-33, 39-58 and 43-34 points.
Railways, K. Venkatesham also of Hyderabad recorded a crucial three frames to two victory over Bihar's Shyamal beating him by 83-01, 34-52, 71-43, 46-57 and 58-45 points.Rishab Pandya of Mumbai downed his citymate from PSPB, Devendra Joshi in four frames by 71-57, 72-37, 06-67 and 76-30 points. Vishal Abrol from Jammu was quite impressive while drubbing Maharashtra's Amit Saboo in four frames by 77-44, 51-24, 35-57 and 57-37 points. This was Saboo's second straight loss and he surely is out of the competition.
Nadeem Ahmed of Tamil Nadu continued his winning spree as he downed Geet Sethi of Gujarat by 77-0, 64-45, 29-64 and 71-08 points. It was not as if Geet was totally off-colour but Nadeem who when he gets going is always a dangerous customer and so it was on this day to the discomfort of Geet.
Uttar Pradesh champion, Anuj Bhargava also gave a creditable display of steady snooker play as he registered his second straight win beating Rajasthan's Vivek Sharma by 65-31, 49-35 and 66-16 points.However another Sharma, Divya Sharma of Haryana was absolutely brilliant in the proces of inflicting a straight frames loss to Tamil Nadu star, S.A. Saleem . Potting methodically and fluently along with superb cue ball control. Divya finished the match in a flash in just 40 minutes and winning in straight three frames.
Local hopeful, Archit Singh Kohli was hot on the heels of the young hope of Maharashtra to eventualy come out tops and win by 18-57, 54-49, 26-61, 71-37 and 68-25 points. West Bengal's Sub Junior national snoker champion , Shoaib Khan had to struggle till the last deciding black ball before winning by 74-40, 61-56, 30-50, 07-73 and 56-44 points to enter the third round of the qualifying competition in the Juniors section alongwith other winners of the day.
In yet another match between two promising youngsters, Shahbaz Adil Khan of PSPB had to fight tooth and nail before he could overcome Shravan Mohta of Maharashtra in four frames by 82-38, 54-67, 54-20 and 65-26 points.