Sethi sales through

CALCUTTA, Jan 6: Geet Sethi needed just one day to settle down. Today, his second day at the 64th National Billiards Championships at the Ca...

CALCUTTA, Jan 6: Geet Sethi needed just one day to settle down. Today, his second day at the 64th National Billiards Championships at the Calcutta Club, he left his opponent S Simachalam of Railways completely unsettled. A break of 401 in his 17th visit to the table. That followed a break of 321 in his 12th. Sethi’s cue was doing all the talking today and Simachalam must have felt just like another spectator.

Sethi totalled 1440 in two hours with Simachalam scoring just 238. No doubt the Calcutta Club has rarely seen such a masterly command of the game.

Ashok Shandilya too proved exactly why is considered a big force in this meet. Ending runner-up at the World Billiards meet in Malta by a whisker, Shandilya got two century break in his 1168 against Rajnish Bansal’s 349. A break of 163 in the 12th and another of 127 in the 34th. Of course he had a couple of big double-figure marks too.

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Devender Joshi might consider himself lucky to have escaped the grip of Mohammad Asim of West Bengal. Rather, Joshi might have ended up on the losing side had it not been for a break of 83 points in his 38th visit.

Earlier, in his 37th visit, Asim had notched up 77 points. Joshi, who had a break of 96 in his third visit itself, appeared to be losing grip in the middle of the game. He finally prevailed 698-606.

Prateek Luhadia of Rajasthan defeated Dipesh Vohra of Kerala 496-222 in a low scoring contest, while B Bhaskar managed to tame ME Jokhi 555-413. Bhaskar had a break of 104 in his seventh visit, in addition to 91 in 13th and 83 in 21st. Orissa’s A Haque defeated Karnataka’s Dharmesh 622-503, while Prem Prakash downed M Srivastava 849-479 in other matches on Tuesday.

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