The Hindu : Sport / Billiards & Snooker : National championships from Monday

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 30, 2005

Sport

Sport - Billiards & Snooker

National championships from Monday

Special Correspondent

Chennai: The city will be the venue for two major sports events in January. The Chennai Open tennis tournament sets the tempo for 2006 at the Nungambakkam complex on January 2 and on the same day the 72nd National billiards and snooker championships get underway at Vijaya Mahal.

Briefing newspersons, Arun Pandian, President, Tamil Nadu Billiards & Snooker Association, said Indian billiards and snookers players had brought home about 20 World titles so far and bagged three gold, two silver and three bronze medals in the last two Asian Games. He thanked the main sponsors, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL), The Hindu, LIC, Sify Ltd., India Cements, Sumeru Soft Ltd and Symkon Global Technologies and co-sponsors Oriental Fire & General Insurance, Cookie Man, Strachaan UK (official table cloth suppliers) and Aramith of Belgium (official ball suppliers). He also wanted more sponsors to promote the game.

Apart from the senior championship, the 14th National women's and 30th junior championships would also be conducted. The sub-junior event for under-17 has also been introduced. This has been done to bring in players to competitive game at an early age, according to the TNBSA President.

Nearly 254 players from all over the country are taking part in the competitions. Pankaj Advani, the current World champion, Geet Sethi, seven-time World champion, Ashok Shandilya, a former World champion, Yasin Merchant, Devendra Joshi, Rafath Habib, Asian gold medallists, and Alok Kumar will be seen in action. In the women's section National snooker champion Vidya Pillai of Tamil Nadu is taking part.

Dronacharya and Arjuna awardee Arvind Savur, who was honoured by the organisers and would be the Government observer for the championship, said the tournament would help players prepare for the Doha Asian Games and Commonwealth tournaments. He also said he was happy that the TNBSA was very active hosting the Nationals now and then and that it would be his 46th year of participation in the National championship.

The venue, Vijaya Mahal, is a new one with English tables and would meet all the needs for the National championship. A group of four members — Venkatesh Bhat, Jt. Secretary, M.C. Manoj, R. Madhusudanan and Pranav Jain — has been formed to look after the arrangements.

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