Manan Chandra wins junior snooker title

Delhi's Manan Chandra won his maiden junior men's snooker title, beating Pankaj Advani of Karnataka 4-3 in the Khel.com National Junior Billiards and Snooker championships, in Madras on Friday.

Pankaj Advani, however, had the consolation of retaining his junior billiards title, when he defeated Jai Ganesh of Tamil Nadu 1081-589 in the last league match.

In the snooker summit final, Chandra worked his way to a superb victory. Trailing by a 1-3 frame score, Chandra made amends by winning the next three frames in a row.

Chandra won 32-64, 82-4, 34-65, 20-47, 79-31, 62-25, 53-30 and dashed Advani's hopes of a grand double, like Anuja Thakur of Maharashtra, who won both the women's titles on Wednesday.

Delhi's Rishad Thukral was second, Advani third and Siddarth Parekh fourth in the snooker event after the round-robin league matches were gone through.

In billiards, Advani secured breaks of 94, 50, 53, 111, 81 and 51 in his 22nd, 31st, 46th, 54th, 63rd and 66th visits respectively.

Jai Ganesh finished third, while Vishal Anand of Maharashtra, who scored over Jaswinder Singh of Rajasthan 739-481, finished runner-up to Advani. Jaswinder, who lost all his three league matches, was fourth.

The senior men's billiards and snooker matches will commence from Saturday.