Lucknow: Vinayak Agarwal, the talented Allahabad cueist of Uttar Pradesh stole the limelight on the third day of the State Bank Indian National Six Red Snooker Championship being played here at the Vijayant Khand, Gomti Nagar situated Mini stadium on Thursday evening, in the process of qualifying for the 64 player main round draw of the 9 days event powered by indian Oil Corporation.
Keeping his head still, and displaying a perfect cue-delivery, Vinayak who has learnt the arts and graces of the game from Maestro Coach, Arvind Savur, brooked no opposition, as he strode majestically for a grand four frames to one victory over state mate, Sabihuddin, beating him by 53-06, 55-02,35-12,18-30 and 278-15 points to romp home. Vinayak played solid safety and combined it with sound potting to afford no chance to his rival.
Also, excelling in the basics of the game was Sumesh Turki of Jammu and Kashmir on this day of the competition, being organized by Lucknow Cue Sports Association under the auspices of UPBSA and Billiards & Snooker Federation Of India.
Turki made short work of Muneer Hussain of the host state defeating him by 26-00,35-01,45-10 and 35-15 points in straight frames to also make the last 64 grade. Incidentally, Turki is another pupil of " Maestro " Arvind Savur, the mentor and coach of the Indian billiards & snooker icon, Pankaj Advani.
Today it was Nikhil Singh 10 year old from Lucknow lost his first match then come back strongly and beat Abhishek Saini from Haryana by 4-3.
In another exciting qualifying final, Delhi's promising lad, Gurdit Singh gave a stellar performance to down his more fancied opponent from Mizoram, Lalsengzela winning an exciting contest by 13-45, 40-13,19-34, 33-01, 51-25 and 49-00 points, to enter the main round.
Maharashtra's talented cueist, Rahul Sachdeva was also bang on target on this day notching up two victories over Shariq of UP by 33-28,43-05,37-13 and41-35 points in straight frames, and then following it up, by outplaying Bihar's Anupam Jha by 32-22,42-06,26-37,33-39,38-25 and 37-04 points.
Rahul needs another win to make the last 64 grade.
In other matches, Gursimar Singh of Punjab beat Rohit Raj saxena by 4-1 frames; KIrubanandh of Tamil nadu beat Vinay Musharaf of UP by 4-0; Ankur Gupta of Delhi got a w/o against Vikas Bhandari of Uttarakhand; Ankit Gupta of Haryana beat Anant Dixit of UP by 4-1 frames; Dharmesh Manik of MP beat Fahad Kareem of UP by 4-2 frames; Ashmit Singh of Delhi beat Hitesh Sethi of Delhi by 4-0 frames;Musa Ahmad of UP beat Aditya Garg of Delhi by 4-2 frames; Deepak T of Delhi beat Gaurav Srivastava of UP by 4-3 frames; Imran Khan of UP beat Himanshu Ronkali of Jammu & Kashmir by 4-0 frames; Nilesh Nagpal of UP beat Abhishek Saini of Haryana by 4-0 frames; Rahul Singh of UP beat Musa Ahmad of UP by 4-1 frames; Vijay Goel of Delhi beat Siddharth Mehra of UP by 4-3 frames; Altamash Saifi of Delhi beat Nikhil of UP by 4-1 frames; Anupam Jha of Bihar beat Ankur Gupta of UP by 4-2 frames; Rohit Rajan of Delhi beat Shavez Khan of UP by 4-1 frames; Harish Gandhi of MP beat Vansh Panjwani of Lucknow by 4-0 frames; Neeraj Kumar of Bihar beat Ashish Gupta of UP by 4-0 frames; Munir Hussain of UP beat Deepak Thakur of Haryana by 4-0 frames; Pushpender Singh of Uttarakhand beat Vaibhav Goel of UP by 4-0 frames; Sumit Talwar of Chandigarh beat Shreshth Agarwal of UP by 4-1 frames; Aayush Kumar of Punjab beat Vikas Dhamija of UP by 4-1 frames; Gurdit Singh of Delhi beat Taran Agarwal of UP by 4-3 frames; Subrat Das of Orissa beat Harshit Verma of Uttarakhand by 4-1 frames; Pawan Kumar of AP beat Vipin Premi of UP by 4-3 frames; Chandan Agarwal of UP beat Gursimar Singh of Punjab by 4-1 frames.