07 February 2013: Venkatesham first time enters into Semi Final of National Billiards

After a long 30 years continuous sporting career, K. Venkatesham (Railways) first time enters into the top four of National Senior Billiards category. Today he defeated Manish Jain of West Bengal 4-1 in Quarter final match of Senior Billiards in Manisha National Billiards & Snooker Championship 2013 being held at Gymnasium Hall of Jiwaji University, Gwalior (Org. by Gwalior District Billiards and Snooker Association) to enter into semi finals.

Venkatesh, who hails from Andhra Pradesh and represents Railways, had been into top 8 earlier at few occasions but this is the first time he cracked into top-4. He played consistent throughout the championship so far, which is enough to delight him. He expressed it as his joyous moments. Today he started the day with his pre-quarter final match where he defeated his state-mate Simhachalam 3-1, who also works for Railways. Later he met Manish Jain of West Bengal in the Quarter final match and dominated since start. In the first game he produced a break of 64 points to gain 1-0 lead in Best of 7 games match. After that he pocketed another game and in the third game he shattered the Bengal challenge with a break of 131 points to gain 3-NIL lead. Venktesham had another good break of 60 points in game no.4 but Manish managed to counter him and pocketed the game but that was his last game win because in the next game Venkatesham produced two back to back breaks of 58 and 88 points to seal the match.

He will now meet B. Bhaskar from Karnataka who defeated former world champion Ashok Shandilya 4-1 to enter into semis. Bhaskar had a great start with unfinished 152 points break and continued with the zeal throughout to outplay veteran Ashok Shandilya..

Despite having a lead of 3-Nil, former Asian Billiards champion Alok Kumar got a tough challenge from Rafath Habib of Railways in last two games. Both the games went close where Rafath managed to win one but in the next he fall short by 5 points and Alok closed the proceedings scoring 150 over 145.

Reining world champion Rupesh Shah walked into semis easily by defeating youngster Dhvaj Haria (Gujarat) in straight set of games 4-Nil. Rupesh had two breaks of 119 and 150 points in 2nd and 3rd games respectively.

Today morning in the pre-quarter finals, Rafath Habib outplayed former world No.2 Dhruv Sitwala (PSPB) 3-1 whereas Dhvaj Haria (Gujarat) knocked out multiple times world no.2 Devendra Joshi (PSPB) 3-1.

The Qualification round of Senior Snooker also started today and had a fair start. 350 odd entries are taking part in this senior snooker qualifying. Out of the 23 qualifiers will enter into main round starting from 11th February.