Vaswani downs Rego in an all-Pune contest

Pune cueists Kunal Vaswani and Alexendar Rego were locked in an intriguing and absorbing contest, before the former managed to come through squeezing through by a tight 3-2 win in the best-offive-frame first round match in the Senior Snooker qualifying round of the Maharashtra State Senior Snooker & Billiards Selection (leg-1) Championship 2018 and played at the Deccan Gymkhana.

Vaswani settled down quickly and wrested the initiative by pocketing the first two frames by close margins. Rego, not prepared to give up easily finally found his touch and comfortable wonthe next two frames to draw level at 2all and take the match to the wire. In the deciding fifth framem Vaswani did well to grabs the chances that came his way and grabbed the frame to snatch a hardfought 9-46, 50-39, 35-80, 20-69 and 49-24 victory.

Talented Mumbai cueists Sumehr Mago and Sparsh Pherwani, both easily won their first round encounters. The 14-year-old Khar Gymkhana player Sumehr was cool and composed as he defeated his Mumbai opponent Shubhojit Roy 3-1 (67-12, 20-57, 57-25, 65-45). On the other hand CCI’s Sparsh proved too good and came up with an impressive efforts, constructing two identical breaks of 62 in the second and third frames as he outclassed Nitish Mane (Pune) 3-0 (64-21, 62-0, 77-1) with a degree of comfort.

Also advancing to the next round was Ganesh Jadhav of Satara who potted steadily to overcome Kumar Shinde of Pune 3-1 (65-33, 47-57, 59-24 and 68-28).