Winning start by Pankaj Advani in Indian Open snooker

While favourite Pankaj Advani opened his campaign with a 4-2 win against Neeraj Kumar in Group A, Brijesh Damani and Dharminder Lilly boosted their chances with back-to-back victories in their group league of the final leg of the Indian Open snooker qualifier here Tuesday.

In a Group C encounter, Damani (PSPB) ousted Rafat Habib (Railways) 4-1 late Monday night and followed it up with a 4-2 win over R. Girish (Railways) Tuesday morning.

Dharminder Lilly of Punjab registered a 4-2 win over Delhi's Anuj Uppal and later defeated Siddharth Parikh of Railways by the same margin.

The results:

Group A: Neeraj Kumar (Rly) bt Manish Jain (WB) 4-3; Pankaj Advani (PSPB) bt Neeraj Kumar 4-2. Group B: J. Varun Kumar (TN) bt Hasan Badami (Mah) 4-3. Group C: Rafat Habib (Rly) bt Varun Madan (Del) 4-0; Brijesh Damani (PSPB) bt R. Girish (Rly) 4-2; Damani bt Habib 4-1. Group D: Anuj Uppal (Del) bt Pushpender Singh (Rly) 4-1; Dharminder Lilly (PB) bt Siddharth Parikh (Rly) 4-2. Group E: Shivam Arora (Bih) bt Himanshu Jain (AP) 4-2; Faisal Khan (Rly) bt Jain 4-1. Group F: Laxman Rawat (Mah) bt Vijay Nichani (TN) 4-1.