Snooker team to skip Asian meet in Pak

A day after top Indian squash players, including Saurav Ghosal and Deepika Pallikal, refused to travel to Pakistan for the Asian Championships.

A day after top Indian squash players, including Saurav Ghosal and Deepika Pallikal, refused to travel to Pakistan for the Asian Championships. citing security reasons, the Indian snooker team too has backed out of the Asian Championships, which begins in Karachi from Saturday.

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Top snooker players, Manan Chandra and Brijesh Damani, were supposed to travel to Pakistan but they opted out.

Referees Irfan Mirza and Sundar Jairaj were also supposed to be a part of the panel of officials but have decided to give the meet a skip.

“The clearance came late and that too it was a verbal go-ahead over telephone,” said Mirza. “On top of that, we were told to travel a particular way but I had already made arrangements to take a train to Amritsar, take an auto-rickshaw and then take a bus to Karachi. But now to change all that will be difficult. Moreover, our players too were pondering whether to travel or not now that the squash players have decided not to go. In the end, we have decided to skip the meet,” he said.

An Indo-Pak snooker series scheduled to be held in Karachi from March 7-10 was called off due to security reasons.

On Wednesday, world No 19 Ghosal said, “We have decided that we will not be going to Pakistan for the Asian individual championship as security remains a concern.”