Chawla stuns top seed Advani; Mehta survives Yasin scare
Top seed Pankaj Advani and third seed Sumit Talwar of Punjab crashed out in the second round of the of the Rs 12.25 lakh prize-money CCI All India Open Snooker Championship, and played at the CCI’s Wilson Jones Billiards Room on Friday.
Meanwhile in the same room, second seed Aditya Mehta, the lone Indian playing in the professional circuit in United Kingdom and Europe, survived a scare from former two-time Asian Snooker champion Yasin Merchant winning by a whisker at 5-4.
Kamal Chawla of Indian Railway dished out a stupendous effort to shut the doors on Advani winner of multiple world (billiards and snooker) titles as he coasted to a rather comfortable 5-2 win in the best-ofnine frame contest. The hot favourite, Advani was unable to stop fine run of Chawla, who managed to show a cool composed approach as he kept in simply and pot steadily to clinch a deserving 64-19, 37-80, 8056,12-63,110-25, 68-55 and 6840 victory.
The reigning National champion Talwar meekly succumbed to a 1-5 defeat at the hands of Sourav Kothari of PSPB.
Sundeep Gulati of Delhi and Maharashtra’s Rahul Sachdev were engaged in absorbing tussle for supremacy before the former managed to come through by a hard-earned 5-4 verdict in a long drawn
In a match of fluctuating fortunes, both the cueist gave it their best shot as they tried to outsmart each other.
The senior pro from Delhi got off to a solid start and with a half century effort of 52 went on to pocket the opening three frames to open up a 3-0 advantage.
But the bearded Mumbai player came roaring back into contention by constructing small but useful breaks of 54 and 45 in winning the fourth and fifth frames comfortably before closely winning the sixth to level frame scores at 3-all.
Gulati once again found his touch and with modest runs managed to win the seventh to regain the lead before Sachdev with some steady play managed to restore parity at 4-4 and take the match to the decider. The ninth frame was a long affair before Gulati cashed in on an opening to win the crucial frame and complete a marathon 89 (break52) 31, 51-33, 66-10, 10-58(54), 767(45), 59-64, 88-8,12-72 and 74-33 victory and advance to the quarter-finals.
Meanwhile, Manan Chandra of PSPB continued with his fine showing as he sent another Maharashtra cueist Ishpreet Singh Chadha packing out in the second round. The former National champion, Manan played steadily and potted quite consistently as compared to his opponent from Mumbai and romped to victory in just six frames, with the scores reading 82-1, 8019, 66-54, 34-64, 75-42 and 6864 in his favour.