Lalrina bags junior boys' snooker title

Mizoram's Lalrina Renthlei claimed the boys' junior snooker title, after finishing on top of the semifinal league at the Hash10-World Sim Nationals, here on Wednesday. There was a three-way tie at the top of the league standings between Lalrina, M.L. Lakshman and Himanshu Jain, which was resolved in the former's favour by frame difference.

Going into the last round of matches, Lalrina was already in pole position with two wins under his belt and barring a poor loss against Lakshman, the title would be his. Lalrina lost the encounter, but not before stretching Lakshman to five frames, ensuring that his frame difference did not take a hit.

With Himanshu struggling (though he went on to win the match 3-2) against Mundir on the adjacent table, Lalrina was assured of the title even before either of the matches reached their conclusion.

Lalrina, Lakshman and Mundir all finished the semifinal league stage on two wins each, but the Mizoram lad's frame difference of +3 (as opposed to Himanshu's +2 and Lakshman's -1) handed him the title.

Shri Krishna advances

In the boys' junior billiards division, Shri Krishna (TN), Ishpreet Singh (Mah), Rohan Jambusaria (Mah) and Anmoldeep Singh (Pun) made it to the main draw after four rounds of qualification.

Alok Kumar suffered a surprise 3-1 loss to Shanker Rao in the men's senior billiards division. Geet Sethi, who was pushed all the way by Siddharth Pariekh on Tuesday, reeled out two breaks of hundred on his way to a convincing 3-0 win over Bhuvaneshwaran of Tamil Nadu.

The results:

Senior billiards (best-of-five frames, 100 up): Group A: I.V. Rajiv (AP) bt M.S. Reddy (Rly) 53-101, 101-73, 102-19, 102-37; Prem Prakash (TN) bt Jai Shankar (Jha) 100-32, 101-38, 101-28; Pankaj Advani (PSPB) bt Vishal Madan (Mah) 46-100, 101-68, 102-0, 100-0.

Group B: Simhachallam (Rlys) bt Anshul Mittal (Har) 101-34, 103-43, 101-28; Shanker Rao (AP) bt Alok Kumar (PSPB) 101-83, 39-102, 101-18, 100-81; Nitin Kohli (UP) bt Utsav Ramani (Guj) 84-100, 102-32, 101-21, 100-53.

Group C: Ketan Chawla (MP) bt Rajkumar (Kar) 103-97, 56-100, 103-93, 100-67; Siddarth Pariekh (Rly) bt Sankeet Saurabh (Bih) 102-28, 101-86, 101-90; Geet Sethi (Guj) bt D. Bhuvaneshwaran (TN) 101-27, 103-0, 102-2.

Group D: Dhruv Sitwala (PSPB) bt Akram Khan (WB) 100-2, 102-67, 67-101, 100-52; Arif Akthar (Chn) bt Abineet Sharma (MP) 102-35, 102-83, 101-11; Arun Agarwal (Mah) bt Subrat Das (WB) 102-4, 101-88, 100-62.

Group E: Shivam Arora (Bih) bt Kankan Shamsi (UP) 13-101, 101-78, 55-100, 101-40, 101-81; Saurav Kothari (PSPB) bt Abhishek Saini (Har) 100-15, 102-16, 101-0; Rupesh Shah (PSPB) bt Aditya Agarwal (Rly) 100-58, 102-87, 100-0.

Group F: Shakeel Ahmed (WB) bt S.A. Saleem (TN) 100-56, 100-25, 101-89; Mahesh Jagdule (Mah) bt Kunal Manchanda (Raj) 100-21, 101-11, 100-44; S.A. Saleem (TN) bt Amit Sharma (UP) 100-30, 101-73, 100-96.

Group G: Bhaskar (Kar) w/o Jayanth Menghani (Raj); Manu Dev (Kar) bt M.C. Manoj (TN) 100-19, 101-44, 96-100, 74-104, 101-84.

Group H: Shyam Jagtiani (WB) bt Amit Lath (Ori) 100-47, 101-14, 102-28; Durga Prasad (Rly) bt Manish Jain (WB) 100-54, 101-78, 101-90; Devendra Joshi (PSPB) bt Dhvaj Haria (Guj) 100-44, 101-8, 64-101, 102-19.

Boys junior snooker (Semifinal league, best-of-five frames): Himanshu Jain (Kar) bt Mundir Sherazi (Kar) 3-2 (51-42, 41-67, 53-67, 71-44, 76-16); M.L. Lakshman (Kar) bt Lalrina Renthlei (Miz) 3-2 (18-85, 74-47, 28-84, 66-4, 68-41); Lalrina bt Himanshu 3-1 (75-17, 18-65, 75-36, 73-19); Himanshu bt Lakshman 3-0 (69-15, 49-45, 87-6); Lalrina bt Mundir 3-1 (39-59, 65-57, 58-17, 65-46); Lakshman bt Mundir 3-2 (40-66, 77-15, 59-10, 58-61, 65-59).

Final standings: 1. Lalrina Renthlei, 2. Himanshu Jain, 3. M.L. Lakshman, 4. Mundir Sherazi.