National Billiards and Snooker C'ship to be held from Jan 12

Elite Indian cueists, including former world champion Pankaj Advani and former Asian billiards champion Sourav Kothari will be seen in action at the Manisha National Billiards and Snooker Championship to be held at the PYC Gymkhana from January 12.
Sourav of PSPB and Siddharth Parikh from Railways have received top and second seeding in senior billiards while PSPB's Manan Chandra and Delhi's Sandeep Gulati are the top two seeded players in senior snooker.
Pankaj Advani is 8th seeded in this segment. In women category, Keerath Bhandaal is top seeded in junior snooker and senior billiards, while Pune's Arantxa Sanchis is second seeded in senior billiards.

Other prominent players who would be seen in action during the event are Dhwaj Haria, Shahbaaz Adil Khan, Alok Kumar, Devendra Joshi, Brijesh Damani, Rupesh Shah, Dhruv Sitwala (all PSPB), Kamal Chawla, Faisal Khan, Laxman Rawat (all Railways).
Ajay Rastogi will be the chief referee while Arun Barve is the tournament secretary.
The Tournament will offer total prize money of Rs 6 lakh along with trophies and medals. It will be held in 12 categories including sub-junior boys' and girls', junior boys' and girls', senior men and women.

For the first time the tournament has received record-breaking entries, as 550 players from 24 states have registered for qualifiers, said tournament director Salil Deshpande.

"This is third national tournament we will be conducting at PYC and it's the only club in India to host three nationals in a span of eight years. This is a proud moment for us," he said.
The tournament will be played at two venues. Along with 13 tables in PYC, additional three tables from Deccan Gymkhana will be used for qualifying matches. A spectator gallery with a capacity of 200 will be built at the PYC hall.
"For the last seven years, Manisha Construction has been supporting national championships in India, it's a rare phenomenon to have this kind of support for such a long time. This is last year of their sponsorship and hence we decided to host the tournament in Pune. We are also thankful to PYC Gymkhana for their overwhelming support," added Deshpande.