Rehani springs a surprise

Rehani, on his part, played a flawless game at the right moments to clinch the match. Rao seemed to have found his rythm, winning the first frame 68-29. But the next two frames saw a reversal of fortunes with the lower seeded Rehani winning both with comfortable ease (63-21, 54-14).

Rao equalised the frame score with a well earned 72-41 win in the fourth but once again found himself in trouble, losing the fifth (18-92).

With a 32-22 lead in the sixth frame for Rao, the match looked to headtowards the deciding seventh frame. But that was not to be as Rehani potted a lucky green and went on to finish the frame and match.

The results of most of the other matches was keeping in adherence to the seedings. National champion Devendra Joshi almost secured his place in the knockout round with a 4-0 win over qualifier Manish Adnani.

Second seed Ashok Shandilya began the day with an emphatic break of 79 in the first frame against Vicky Jagtiani. And except for a hiccup in the second faced no problems in putting the match beyond his lesser rated opponent (4-1).

Punjab’s Alok Kumar, seeded third here, put his two shock defeats at the hands of Varun Taneja and Nalin Patel behind as he notched a 4-0 win today. “I have not been practicing for the past few days,” revealed Alok who is part of the Indian contingent to take part in the tri-nation tournament to be played in UAE.

Alok’s opponent Nishant Dossa, incidentally, has been the most successful amongst the qualifiers with four points to his tally,including a 4-3 win over 10th seed Patel in the first round.

Results (4th round league)
Seedings in prefix

1-Devendra Joshi bt Manish Adnani 4-0 (64-43, 94-5, 62-32, 73-45); 2-Ashok Shandilya bt Vicky Jagtiani 4-1 (79-9, 49-93, 71-7, 71-24, 59-7); 4-Dharminder Lily bt Ritesh Shah 4-0 (67-45, 71-33, 65-49, 67-40); 3-Alok Kumar bt Nishant Dossa 4-0 (77-30, 62-42, 67-47, 61-24); Mukesh Rehani bt 9-Siddharth Rao 4-2 (29-68, 63-21, 54-14, 41-72, 92-18, 5-32); Amit Saboo bt S A Salim 4-0 (70-29, 74-11, 58-7, 101-14); 10-Nalin Patel bt Varun Taneja 4-0 (63-11, 50-32, 60-26, 73-8)