National 6-Red Snooker C’ship: Girish stuns Shrikrishna

R. Girish even gave Pankaj Advani a minor scare.

R. Girish playing S. Shrikrishna on Wednesday at the National championship in Chennai.

Pankaj Advani started the defence of his crown with two wins, albeit with minor hiccups, at the National 6-Red Snooker Championship here on Wednesday. The highlight of the day, however, was R. Girish’s stunning win over S. Shrikrishna in a Group A match.

Placed alongside Advani and Abhimanyu Gandhi, Girish turned the tables on the Shrikrishna, the junior National champion, 4-2 in the morning session. He even gave the National champion a minor scare, picking two frames off Advani.

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Advani, who breezed past Abhimanyu 4-0 in the morning, however, used his experience to prevail over Girish 4-2.

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“Playing Shrikrishna is always difficult,” Girish said, adding “I was playing smoothly and potting well.”

Girish clinched the first frame easily and though Shrikrishna retaliated in the second with a phenomenal break of 66 to level it, Girish took the next two frames for a comfortable 3-1 lead. Though Shrikrishna won the next frame, Girish went on to clinch the game with a break of 60.

In another upset, youngster Digvijay Kadian whitewashed former Asian gold-medallist Manan Chandra 4-0 in his Group O match.

J. Varun Kumar, after losing the first two matches, stunned Rafath Habib 4-1 in a Group K match.

• Pankaj Advani bt Abhimanyu Gandhi 4-0, bt R. Girish 4-2;
• Girish bt S. Shrikrishna 4-2;
• Alok Kumar bt K Rakesh 4-1, bt Daksh Reddy 4-0;
• Varun Madan bt Alok Kumar 4-1;
• Rafath Habib bt Vinayak Agarwal 4-3;
• Vinayak bt J. Varunkumar 4-2;
• Varunkumar bt Rafath Habib 4–1;
• Ishpreet Chadha bt Dhruv Sitwala 4-1;
• Sitwala bt R. Pranit 4-3, bt D. Rajkumar 4-3;
• Pranit bt D. Rajkumar 4-1;
• Dhruv Singh bt S. A. Saleem 4-1;
• Vijay Nichani bt G. Prabhu 4-3;
• Anurag Giri bt Siddharth Parikh 4-0;
• Aneesh Saini bt Pandurangaiah 4-0;
• Digvijay Kadian bt Manan Chandra 4-0;
• Vijay Nichani bt Mukund Bharadiya 4-3;
• Manan Chandra bt Jatin Rawat 4-0;
• Laxman Rawat bt Khizar Raoof 4-3;
• G. Prabhu bt Mukund Bharadiya 4-1;
• Kamal Chawla bt Ketan Chawla 4-1;
• Anurag Giri bt Aditya Agrawal 4-0.