Youngsters Rahul Sachdev and Himanshu Jain, both from Mumbai, scored impressive victories to storm into the quarter-finals of the 4th Indian Open snooker qualifying tournament today.
Sachdev, 22, inflicted a humiliating 4-0 defeat on seasoned campaigner Manav Panchal, also from Mumbai, in a lop- sided pre-quarter-final encounter at the Cricket Club of India here.
On the adjacent table, 23-year-old Jain was on a roll and did not encounter much resistance from 19-year-old city rival Nikhil Saigal as he went on to record an identical 4-0 victory in another last 16 tie. Jain breezed to a 60-51 68-33 51-40 71-14 win.
Siddharth Parikh of Railways and Vipin Premi of Uttar Pradesh also comfortably won respective pre quarter-final matches to earn a meeting against each other in the quarter-final.
Parikh demolished Gaurav Jaisinghania 4-0 (55-42, 84- 42, 60-08, 66-33) and Premi tamed Gujarat's Narsidani Johnson 4-1 (55-45, 51-34, 58-59, 52-08, 59-23) without much ado.
Third round results (all from Mumbai unless stated otherwise): Yogesh Sharma (Pune) beat Rovin D'Souza 4-2; Taaha Khan (Pune) beat Sumit Saldurkar 4-3; Rahul Sachdev beat Jayesh S 4-0; Hasan Badami beat Aparajeet Mittal 4-0; Nikhil Saigal beat Anas Ali 4-3; Himanshu Jain beat Mahesh Jagdale 4-2; Manav Panchal beat Farhad Tengra 4-2.
