PSPB billiards & snooker: ONGC win Team Billiards title; IOCL stayed No.2

Bengaluru, Oct 18 Star-studded Team ONGC, with Pankaj Advani, Rupesh Shah, Dhruv Sitwala and Sourav Kothari in its ranks, won the Team Billiards title at the 18th PSPB Inter-Unit Billiards and Snooker Tournament 2022-23.

The competition is being played at KSBA, Bengaluru where the final of the Team Billiards was played last night between

In the Team Billiards final to be played on Monday night, Team ONGC defeated Team IOCL, comprising Aditya Mehta, Brijesh Damani, Dhvaj Haria and Laxman Rawat.

The first game of 200 points was played between Dhruv Sitwala (ONGC) and Dhvaj Haria (IOCL). Dhruv kept Dhvaj at bay and within two visits he scored breaks of 96 and 104 (unfinished) to win the game 200-14.

The second game had a close contest between Sourav Kothari (ONGC) and Brijesh Damani (IOCL) where Damani succeeded to move ahead of Kothari with a scoreline of 200-136.

For the final game, Pankaj Advani (ONGC) came to play against Aditya Mehta (IOCL) for the balance 78 points to win the title and he achieved that easily with a break of 62 in the first visit and then the remaining 16 points in the next having score line 78-19 and total for ONGC 414-233.

BPCL secured the third position after defeating OIL India 400-49 in the placing match. For BPCL, Devendra Joshi beat Arun Rao 200-70 and S. Shrikrishna beat Amarish Kamalapuri 200-32.

On Tuesday, Snooker Individual matches started for the Professional and Non-Professional categories with Pankaj Advani (ONGC) reaching the semifinals stage after defeating Ishpreet Singh of GAIL 3-1.

He will meet S. Shrikrishna of BPCL in the semifinals who knocked out Rupesh Shah of ONGC after a nail-biting quarterfinal match 3-2. The entire match saw breaks of 73 and 50 from Rupesh, and 53, and 64 from

Shrikrishna.

The second semifinal will be played between Aditya Mehta (IOCL) and Dhvaj Haria (IOCL). Aditya played two matches on Tuesday and knocked out Devendra Joshi 3-0 and Laxman Rawat 3-2. Whereas, Dhvaj Haria defeated Manan Chandra 3-2 after a thrilling

quarterfinal match where Dhvaj was down 1-2 and had faced a break of 80 from Manan Chandra but after that, he secured a closely fought fourth frame to level the match.

The decider was also tough and at one point Manan Chandra was about to win the match but he missed crucial pink to give chance and Dhvaj did the rest.

For the Non-Professional Snooker category, the defending champion Arif Akhtar from IOCL has reached the finals after winning the matches against Faiz Ahmed of GAIL 2-0, and Tasrique A. Haque of OIL India 2-0. He will meet Amarish Kamalapuri of OIL who reached the final after winning against Raufeek of GAIL 2-1, and Jaya Prakash of MRPL 2-0.