The Hindu : Sport / Billiards & Snooker : Anuja and Meenal record wins

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 09, 2005

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Sport - Billiards & Snooker

Anuja and Meenal record wins

By G. Viswanath

MUMBAI, JAN. 8. The Thakur sisters — Anuja and Meenal — struck form straightaway and trounced their rivals by big margins.

At the Goregaon Sports Club on Saturday, Anuja and Meenal awarded a straight entry into the quarterfinals of the 13th women's national billiards event and defeated their opponents in style. Anuja vanquished Tamil Nadu's Kamala Chandra Babu and Meenal repeated the same story against Madhya Pradesh's Ashwini Puranik.

Anuja's confident start in defence of her title was evident in her opening game itself; she pocketed it 51-7.

Another regular in the national circuit, Tamil Nadu's Vidya Pillai had a real battle in her hands against Maharashtra's Heena Khandelwal. She came through the wringer in three games before prevailing over M. Chitra in the quarterfinals. Vidya started with a 2-0 win over Neeta Kothari. All this splendid action on the opening day has taken four players to the semifinals where Anuja will face Vidya and Meenal will take on Uma Devi.

The results (women's billiards): Quarterfinals: Meenal Thakur (Mah) bt Ashwini Puranik (MP) 50-37, 51(45)-11, Anuja Thakur (Mah) bt Kamala Babu Naidu (Tamil nadu) 51-7; 50-20, Vidya Pillai (Tamil Nadu) bt M. Chitra (Knt) 52-34, 51-39; Revanna Uma Devi (Knt) bt Soumini Srinivasan (Tamil Nadu) 52-15,50-23; Pre-quarterfinals: Vidya Pillai (TN) bt Heena Khandelwal (Mah) 18-50, 50-31, 51-43, Ashwini Puranik (MP) bt Neeta Sanghvi (Mah) 50-22, 51-32, Kamla Babu Naidu (TN) bt Sangeeta Hemchand (Mah) 56-41, 19-51, 53-37; Ist Round: Vidya Pillai

(TN) bt Neeta Kothari (WB) 50-33, 50-43; Soumini Srinivasan (TN) bt Priyanka Agarwal (Orissa) 50-31, 50-28.

Junior billiards qualifiers (one hr format): Quarterfinals: Ajay Bhushan (Knt) bt Roshan Dalwani (Knt) 189-156; Chetan Chabra (AP) bt Kiran Chawla (Knt) 206-198; Satish Kumar (Knt) bt Naimesh Jadhav (Guj) 172-165; Pre-quarterfinals: Sharan Rajani (Knt) bt Harshil Thakkar (Guj) 204-107,Naineesh Jadhav (Guj) bt Rohan Anand (Bihar) 207-190, Roshan Dalwani (Knt) bt Karthik Murugeshan (TN) 147-127, Satish Kumar (Knt) bt Tamil Nambi (TN) 179-113, Chintan Sampat (Mah) bt H. Dhivaj (Guj) 192-115, Chetan Chabra bt Karan Sharda (Mah) 164-152.

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