By IANS,
Chennai : Top seed Manan Chandra of Petroleum Sports led a field of fancied players into the semi-finals of the Madras Gymkhana Club’s All-India invitational snooker tournament, here Thursday with a 4-1 victory over former National champion Alok Kumar (ONGC).
Chandra next meets former Asian champion Yasin Merchant (Maharashtra) who overcame Devendra Joshi (PSBB) 4-1 in a battle of the veterans.
In the other quarter-final matches, Sourav Kothari (PSBB) knocked out Brijesh Damani (Bengal) 4-3 and Aditya Mehta (PSBB) swept past the promising Faisal Khan (Railways) 4-0.
Kothari needed all his experience to subdue Damani in a touch-and-go match that went the distance. Neither player was able to get into rhythm, and the exchanges were rather scrappy before Kothari pulled through on the colours in the deciding frame.
The semi-finals are scheduled for later tonight.
The results (quarter-finals):
Manan Chandra (PSBB) bt Alok Kumar (PSBB) 4-1 (87-45, 69-25, 8-75, 80-38, 74-43); Yasin Merchant (Mah) bt Devendra Joshi (PSBB) 4-0 (56-60, 91-1, 60-50, 75-0, 66-6); Aditya Mehta (PSBB) bt Faisal Khan (Rlys) 4-0 (91-15, 79-0, 84-2, 85-8); Saurav Kothari (PSBB) bt Brijesh Damani (Bengal) 4-3 (10-79, 71-57, 8-76, 88-0, 90-1, 11-75, 64-48).