Four players from Pune advanced through the group stage of the Billiards and Snooker Association of Maharashtra (BSAM) 6 Red Snooker State Selection Tournament 2019, at the Poona Club on Sunday. The tournament now rolls into the first knock-out stage.
Saad Sayed, Ashwin Palnitkar, Sanket Mutha and Madhav Joshi, who are the four players from Pune, will be joined by Ajinkya Yelve and Suraj Rathi, from Mumbai, in the last-16 of the tournament. Two more players will join the list of the aforementioned six unseeded players and take on the top-8 seeded players in the pre-quarter final round on Monday.
The seeded roster boasts three participants from Pune and will start their venture in the tournament from the pre-quarter final stage. Hasan Badami (Mumbai) is the top-seed, followed by Manav Panchal (Mumai), Taha Khan (Thane), Rohan Sakalkar (Pune), Rayaan Razmi (Mumbai), Shivam Arora (Pune), Shahbaz Khan (Mumbai) and Rajeev Sharma (Mumbai).
The draws for the pre-quarter final round will take place on Monday, and will determine which unseeded player faces the toughest challenge of the lot.
While the group stage rounds were best of seven frames, the pre-quarter finals will be best of nine frames.
{{/usCountry}}While the group stage rounds were best of seven frames, the pre-quarter finals will be best of nine frames.
{{/usCountry}}The semi-finals will be best of eleven frames and the final will be best of thirteen. The top-10 players of the tournament will earn a qualification for the next national snooker tournament.
Pune’s Saad Sayed eliminated four opponents in the group stage to reach the last-16. Sayed beat all his opponents with a final score of 4-1.
Pune’s Rajwardhan Joshi was his victim in the first round, followed by Nilesh Patankar in the next round and Chiplun’s Siddhesh Mulay in the third. Sayed then beat Ajinkya Yelve to qualify for the knock-out phase. Yelve, however, qualified through the loser bracket final in Group C by recording the highest break of the tournament (62 points) against Mulay.
Ashwin Palnitkar lost to Sanket Mutha by a margin of a single point in the final match of the group stage, but just like Yelve, Palnitkar managed to beat Mumbai’s Poras Shah 4-2 in the loser bracket of Group A and placed himself in the knock-out stage. Mutha, who started the tournament with a convincing 4-0 victory over Pune’s Tony D’Silva, was involved in a couple of nervy encounters towards the end of the group stage as he won both games by a margin of one point.
Group B turned out to be interesting as Mumbai’s Suraj Rathi defeated Shahyan Razmi, brother of fifth seed Rayaan Razmi, and propelled himself into the next phase. Shahyaan went into the loser bracket where he faced Madhav Joshi for a spot in the last-16. Shahyaan had already faced and defeated Joshi 4-2 in the second round, but a good run of form in the loser bracket ensured Joshi’s victory over Shahyaan, gifting him a spot in the knock-outs.
The final round of matches in group D will take place on Monday, after which the draw for the pre-quarter finals will be held. While players from Mumbai dominate the seeded list, there is a good chance of witnessing some upsets and surprises in the knock-out phase.
The chance of another Pune player entering the knock-out stages are high as the final winner’s bracket match of group D will see Pune’s Abhishek Bora take on Aurangabad’s Rohan Kothare.
Punekars in last 16
Seeded
4-Rohan Sakalkar
6-Shivam Arora
Unseeded
Saad Sayed
Ashwin Palnitkar
Sanket Mutha
Madhav Joshi