30 March 2022 Written By CSI News Desk
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The 17th PSPB Inter Unit Billiards and Snooker Tournament 2021-22 ended yesterday at Clube Tennis de Gasper Dias in Goa. The tournament had the participation of five organizations i.e Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL), Oil India Limited (OIL), Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) and the host organization Oil & Natural Gas Limited (ONGC) under the umbrella of Petroleum Sports Promotion Board.
A total of six disciplines were played over the last five days which are Individual Billiards for Professionals and Non-Professionals, Individual Snooker for Professional and Non-Professionals; and the Team Championships for Billiards and Snooker respectively.
At first, the Billiards Individual events for Professional and non-Professionals were played in which ONGC bagged two medals for the professional category i.e. Gold by Sourav Kothari and Bronze by Dhruv Sitwala. BPCL's Manan Chandra claimed a Silver medal. For the non-Professional Billiards, Arif Akhtar won the gold whereas Oil players Amarish Kamalapuri and Tasrique A. Haque secured Silver and Bronze medals for their company OIL.
On 26th March, the Team Billiards event began where team ONGC reached the final defeating team OIL whereas IOCL defeated BPCL to reach the finals. In the final, ONGC defeated IOCL to lift the Team Billiards trophy. Later BPCL knocked out OIL to secure the bronze medal for them.
For Team Snooker, the final was played between ONGC and BPCL. Here also, ONGC defeated OIL and BPCL knocked out IOCL to reach the finale.
The final had an interesting finish and it happened after a long time that the match reached the deciding frame. The first three sets scored equal 1-1 each and then in the deciding frame, Kreishh Gurbaxani defeated Pankaj Advani to win the Team Snooker title for BPCL.
For the Snooker individuals, S. Shrikrishna from BPCL won the title defeating Dhvaj Haria of IOCL 3-2. For the Bronze medal, another IOCL player Laxman Rawat defeated Pankaj Advani 2-1.
For the Non-Professional Snooker category, Arif Akhtar won the title defeating Tolan Baruah 2-0. And for the Bronze medal, Amarish Kamalapuri knocked out Soumen Baruah 2-1.
Lastly, the tournament committee adjudged Sourav Kothari of ONGC as the Player of the tournament for the Billiards category and Kreishh Gurbaxani of BPCL for Snooker.
