The Hindu : Sport / Billiards & Snooker : Sourav Kothari to play in Worlds

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Sourav Kothari to play in Worlds

KOLKATA: Despite ranking No. 9 in India, Sourav Kothari will get a chance to play in the IBSF world championship as a wild card in the point format. The 25-year-old ONGC executive on Monday exuded confidence of doing well in his eighth world meet.

The championship will begin at Pune from August 20 to 28.

Good nick

Son of former world billiards champion Manoj Kothari, Sourav has been in good nick in recent times; a fact corroborated by the position he gained in the Asian Games qualifiers held at Indore early this month.

He finished second behind B. Bhaskar and relegated the celebrated cue sport exponents like Pankaj Advani and Geet Sethi behind him.

The slightly-built snooker No. 2 in the country hopes to surpass his previous best of reaching the quarterfinals in 2008 both in the professional and amateur worlds.

“I have come a long way in the past two years. I have developed as a solid player by improving my focus and patience which are the two aspects much needed to excel in this sport,'' he said to a question.

Favourites

Sourav thinks Mike Russell of England will be the man to beat in both point and time formats. A close second will be Peter Gilchrist of Singapore.

Pankaj Advani, Geet Sethi, Devendra Joshi, Ashok Shandilya, B. Bhaskar, Alok Kumar, Dhruv Sitwala and Rupesh Shah are the other Indians in the point format.

Apart from Sourav and Rupesh Shah, the other seven are in the time format. – Special Correspondent

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