PANJIM, FEB 13
Aditya Mehta of IndianOil clinched the individual snooker title defeating Devendra Joshi of BPCL in lackluster final of 5th Inter-Unit PSPB Billiards and Snooker Championship at Clube Tennis de Gaspar Dias, here on Friday.
From the word go, both players resorted to safety play to overcome the sheer pressure of a final encounter. As a result, the red balls started to gather near the side cushions leaving no opportunity to the players to build up any decent breaks. The standard of the game never rose to any dizzy heights as was expected from their performance exhibited in earlier matches. Finally, in a scrappy match youth prevailed over experience as Mehta managed to brush aside Joshi 4-0 without making any decent breaks.
Meanwhile, the high profile team of ONGC billiards spearheaded by six time world champion Pankaj Advani had no difficulty in overcoming the challenge posed by IndianOil team, more known for their snooker prowess.
In a 200-point format, Advani of ONGC beat Shravan Mohta of IndianOil 200-35 with the help of two nice breaks of 86 & 90. In the next game ONGC fielded their vastly experienced player Alok Kumar against Aditya Mehta of IndianOil. Here again Kumar displayed a debonair billiards, chalking up a break of 139, displaying some deft touch to get past Aditya 200-76.
Earlier in the quarter-finals Gas Authority of India (GAIL) beat Oil India Ltd. (OIL) to set up a semi-final clash with BPCL. In the first match, J K Kotoki of OIL beat Anil Sharma of GAIL 200-187. In the second game, GAIL came back with Satish Saini winning against Bimal Dutta of OIL 200-146. In the decider, S K Gupta of GAIL needed to score 160 points to win the match before T. C Das of OIL could reach 200 points. Gupta scored the required points while T C Das could reach only171.
In the semi-finals, however, GAIL could not match the skill of BPCL team consisting of former World No. 2 Devendra Joshi, Manan Chandra, Shahbaz Khan and Anuja Chandra and went down tamely. For BPCL Manan Chandra and Shahbaz Khan won their respective matches comfortably.
