Firm favourites Pankaj Advani and Aditya Mehta, both representing Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB), made an early exit after losing in the last 16 round of Men’s 6-Red snooker event at the Sage-National Billiards & Snooker Championship here.
The 36-year-old Pankaj, the World 6-Red champion and defending champion, went down to an inspired teammate Dhvaj Haria who was in tremendous form to carve out a 5-2 win.
In the other encounter, which was also a contest between PSPB players, the 39-year-old Brijesh Damani prevailed over 36-year-old Aditya Mehta with a similar 5-2 scoreline.
The left-handed Dhvaj started in rousing fashion constructing breaks of 60 and 52 in the opening two frames and quickly raced to a 4-0 lead.
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Pankaj, winner of 24 world titles, showed signs of fighting back as he stemmed the rot by compiling a 56 points break to take the fifth and also pocketed the sixth to bridge the gap.
But, the tall Dhvaj dashed Pankaj’s hopes by comfortable winning the seventh to wrap up the contest with the frame scores reading 60-05, 52-07, 45-06, 38-28, 04-60, 00-47, and 49-11 in his favour.
The Kolkata-based Brijesh played steadily and positively went for his pots to build small breaks which helped him to gain the upper hand against Aditya before going on to record a 12-45, 75-14, 37-00, 24-32, 33-31, 37-04, and 53-05 verdict and a passage to the quarter-finals.
Meanwhile, local challenger and defending champion Amee Kamani of Madhya Pradesh made a shock exit losing to Karnataka’s Varshaa Sanjeev 3-4 in seven nerve-wracking frames in the Ladies 6-Red snooker quarter-finals.
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