National Billiards & Snooker Championship 2008 - Indore

Yeshwant Club

Race Course Road - Indore - 452 003 - Madhya Pradesh

08 November 2008

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Malkeet Singh Dazzles!

Notwithstanding the sedate start to the proceedings in the superb billiards Air - conditioned hall of the Yeshwant Club here on Saturday morning with the start of the Sub - Juniors section of the 2008 National billiards & snooker championship,  the ambience of the venue could only be matched with the one which was there in the recently held World billiards championship in Bangalore only very recently it was the nine year old scion of the Arif Akhtar household who stole the limelight on the opening day of the 23 days mega event of cue sports in the country.

Wearing 10 inches high platform shoes specially designed to make him reach the height of the " green baize ", diminutive, Farhaz Arif the son of the Chandigarh billiards champion, Arif Akhtar was the cynosure of all eyes even as he confidently strode around the billiards table delighting the appreciative audience with his delectable in -offs and red pots around the red spot. Even though he lost his maiden match he made history to become the youngest entrant in any event of  cue sports in the country at the raw age of nine.

The other cueist to impress was the Uttar Pradesh Champion, 16 year old X standard student of the  City Montessori School, Rajendra Nagar branch in Lucknow, Malkeet Singh as he displayed excellent potting and confident in- offs to enter the semi finals of the Sub - Juniors billiards event. Malkeet first beat Jaiveer Singh of Maharashtra by 130-115 points and then he surprised everyone by toppling the top seeded, last year's winner, Dhwaj Haria of Gujarat in the next round by 150-136 points to enter the last eight. In the round of 8, Malkeet completely out classed Andhra's Himanshu Jain by 214-93 points to enter the last four of the billiards event. others entering the last 4 were Mundir Sherazi of Karnataka beating Delhi's Akshay Kumar by 314-121 points, Maharashtra's Rohan Jammu Suriya beat Udit Sharma of Uttar Pradesh by 160-151 points and Kaim Talib of Maharashtra getting the better of Rishit Jain of Delhi to complete the semifinal line up in the three balls event.

Malkeet takes on Kaim while Sherazi will fight it out with Rohan the winners setting up a summit clash slated for Sunday evening. Meanwhile the qualifying section of the Juniors section also began with the billiards matches as well as the matches in the more popular 22 balls snooker game.

Results of Day One

Varun (DEL) Beat Chirag (HAR) by 433-265 points.

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