BHOPAL, 7 April 2006 — Manan Chandra and world snooker champion Pankaj Advani have qualified for the Asian Snooker Championship to be held at Colombo in Sri Lanka from June 30 to July 7.
Yasin Merchant and Pankaj Advani were placed first and second respectively in the first qualifying round tournament for the selection of Indian snooker squad for Doha Asian Games in December 2006. Three more rounds of the qualifying tournament will be held before the Indian squad is announced for the Asiad.
The 10-day national tournament-cum-selection camp for both snooker and billiards squad was held at the BHEL Senior Club here in Bhopal recently. The Madhya Pradesh Sports and Youth Welfare Department organized the event in collaboration with the BHEL, Bhopal unit. The tournament was played on round robin league basis.
Chandra and Advani qualified for the Asian Championship after adding up the points they gained in the National Snooker Championship in Chennai and in Bhopal. Chandra with total 6,553 points finished on top among the eight contestants while Advani with 6,408 points remained at the second spot. Merchant missed the bus by just four points with a tally of 6,404.
Meanwhile, Merchant kept his hopes alive of making into the Asian Games squad. He finished on top of the table with 18 points in the first leg here with Pankaj Advani having 15 points trailed in the second place. The second leg of the qualifying tournament of billiards and snooker for selection is to be held in Hyderabad.
On the concluding day, Advani totally outplayed Manan Chandra 3-0 (96-0, 74-28, 113-17) in their last match wherein Chandra made just 45 points as against the 283 points collected by the world champion Advani.
In other matches of the day Alok Kumar, the bronze medallist in the recently concluded World Snooker Championship, defeated Rafat Habib 3-1 (60-23, 74-34, 23-70, 45-40), Ashok Shandilya struggled to down Neeraj Kumar 3-2 (82-10, 54-64, 26-66, 75-39, 64-62), Rupesh Shah beat Devendra Joshi 3-1 (96-0, 52-60, 68-45, 71-01), Yasin Merchant beat Sarang Shroff 3-1 (82-09, 40-60, 64-19, 63-33) and junior national champion Aditya Mehta blanked Siddarth Rao 3-0 (73-41, 61-07, 64-50). Madhya Pradesh Industries Minister Babulal Gaur, who was the chief guest at the closing ceremony, distributed cash prizes worth Rs 100,000, sanctioned by the Madhya Pradesh Sports and Youth Welfare Department, to the players. He congratulated the players for their good performance.
Earlier, Manoj Kothari, the billiards coach appointed by Indian Billiards & Snooker Federation, (IBSF), who co-coordinated the 10-day extravaganza, lauded Madhya Pradesh Sports and Youth Welfare Department under the Sports Minister Yashodhra and BHEL management for the high standards set to organize the event with the best facilities available.
