The Hindu : Sport / Billiards & Snooker : Joshi dumps Alok Kumar

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 21, 2005

Sport

Sport - Billiards & Snooker

Joshi dumps Alok Kumar

By G. Viswanath

MUMBAI, JAN. 20. Alok Kumar bowed out of the national billiards championship in the pre-quarterfinals leaving Geet Sethi, Ashok Shandilya, Devendra Joshi and Pankaj Advani vying for the title. Alok went down narrowly to Devendra Joshi. After dethroning Alok, Joshi prevailed over Karnataka's B. Bhaskar to join Sethi, Shandilya and Advani in the semifinals.

The initial sparring saw Joshi working his way towards a 158 and Alok smothering it with a 173 to keep his nose in front. The game was going nowhere before Joshi made a profitable exercise of his seventh visit with a good score.

Joshi's 248 held him in good stead till the clock stopped Alok. The defending champion needed at least 86 in one go in approximately three minutes; he managed to get 77. This was after Joshi had missed a regulation red-pot and offering a last chance to grab.

The results:

Sr. billiards: Quarterfinals: Geet Sethi (Guj) 820 (58, 103, 94, 63, 198) bt Rishabh Thakkar (Mah) 649 (67, 125, 70, 52); Pankaj Advani (PSPB) 1311 (80, 53, 270, 60, 85, 79, 155) bt Sourav Kothari (WB) 767 (79, 78, 77, 120); Ashok Shandilya (Rlys) 988 (68, 184, 94, 144, 119, 52) bt Shyam Jagtiani (Rlys) 733 (63); Devendra Joshi (PSPB) 869 (56, 53, 137) bt B. Bhaskar (Kar) 832 (55, 54, 90, 65, 134, 86).

Pre-quarterfinals: B. Bhaskar (Kar) 546 (135, 120, 108, 86) bt Dhruv Sitwala (PSPB) 445 (100, 167); Shyam Jagtiani (Rlys) 599 bt Siddharth Parikh (Rlys) 367, Ashok Shandilya (Rlys) 719 (117) bt Prem Prakash (TN) 454; Devendra Joshi (PSPB) 608 (158, 85, 248, 59) bt Alok Kumar 599 (173, 56, 54, 55, 77); Pankaj Advani (PSPB) 1025 (114, 273, 206) bt Arun Agarwal (Mah) 331; Geet Sethi (Guj) 1007 (98, 151, 131, 99, 150, 87, 58, 101) bt Mohd. Asim (Rlys) 338 (90); Rishakbh Thakkar (Mah) 644 (90) bt K. Venkatesh (Rlys) 441, Sourav Kothari (WB) 703 (bt Nitin Kohli (UP) 416.

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