Time to take a cue

Every sport has its own charm and its particular set of admirers. While most would vouch for cricket in terms of popularity, it comes as no surprise that the other sports, though with a smaller viewership, are pretty much alive. Though the baggage of expectations, politics and expenditure certainly exist in every sport, yet there is no dearth of players when it comes to the other sports played in our cricket-crazy nation.

While the word, “sports” reminds one of games like hockey, football, cricket and tennis to a large extent, it is not always that one associates Billiards and Snooker at the mere mention of the word.

Yet a notion of this kind, fortunately does not exist among many and this is clearly visible when one visits the Film Nagar Cultural Centre, Hyderabad where the selection trials for the upcoming Billiards and Snooker World Cup competitions are being held. The selections which began on Sunday will conclude on the 16th of this month. Unlike what many would have expected, there were a decent number of spectators who turned up to watch the who’s who of the Billiards and Snooker fraternity take on each other.

The World Cup which is scheduled to be held in November in Egypt, will see the best of the players from all across the globe, vying for the top honours.

While the players to represent India would be decided at the end of the selection trials (July 16), Sanjay Sawant, the National Snooker coach is very confident of a good show by the selected Indian team. “There are very good players who have come from all over the country for the selections. Whoever is selected will certainly perform well,” he said.

The players also seem to ooze a similar kind of confidence. “Indians usually do well at such major events. Pankaj Advani is one good example,” says local lad, Lucky Vatnani.

With this kind of a buoyancy existing among the players and the coaches, one should not be surprised if India rise above the others in the land of the Pyramids.

Results

• Lucky Vatnani bt Rafath Habib 3-0;
• Manan Chandra bt Kamal Chawla 3-2;
• Brijesh Damani bt Himangshu 3-1;
• Siddharth Parikh bt Shahbaaz Khan 3-0;
• Arantxa Sanchez bt Chithra 2-1;
• Lucky Vatnani bt Neeraj 3-0;
• Vidya bt Keerath Bhandal 2-1;
• Himangshu bt Siddharth Parikh 3-2;
• Rafath Habib bt Shahbaaz Khan 3-2;
• Kamal Chawla bt Neeraj 3-1;
• Brijesh Damani bt Shahbaaz 3-2.

The players participating in the selection trials (in descending order of their rankings)

Women’s Snooker

Vidya Pillai

Arantxa Sanchis

Neena Praveen

Suniti Damani

Chitra M

Keerat Bhandal

Men’s Snooker

Kamal Chawla

Brijesh Damani

Lucky Vatnani

Siddharth Parikh

Shahbaaz Adil Khan

Rafath Habib

Himanshu Jain

Neeraj Kumar

Manan Chandra

I.H. Manudev

Billiards

Rupesh Shah

Arun Agarwal

Alok Kumar

Devendra Joshi

Dhruv Sitwala

B. Bhaskar

Sourav Kothari

Ashok Shandilya

Siddharth Parikh

V. Subramaniam

Geet Sethi

K. Venkatesham

Tags: snooker

Category: Sport, Sports News