File picture of a snooker match during the last state-level competition

Bhubaneswar, Nov. 20: The top cueists of the state are all set to battle it out for the numero uno position at the 20thState Championship that begins this Friday. To be hosted at Cue Sport Academy, the championship, organised by the Billiards and Snooker Association of Odisha, will witness duels between the most admired players from all age groups.

The state championship will be hosted for various segments. There would be competitions in the sub-junior, junior and senior divisions for both billiards and snooker. The defending champions, as expected, have been chosen as the top seeds for the events.

“None of the top seeds would need to play in the first round. In the sub-junior and junior snooker, senior billiards and snooker events, the top seeds would be seen playing the winner of the first rounds. In the sub junior billiards, top rated Ashutosh Padhy will appear straight in the semi-final while in junior billiards, he will be playing right in the finals,” said Subrat Das, current state No. one in senior billiards and defending champion of the state title.

In the senior snooker championship, Nishant Biswal has been given the top billing while Ashutosh Padhy has been rated top for four events – the sub-junior and junior of both snooker and billiards.

Among other cueists are Piyush Sharma, Barun Naik, Sahil Arora, Krishna Prayag Naik, Devi Prasad Sahoo, Rumit Gupta, Sidharth Sen, Sureet Singh, Jiten Sarangi, Kunal Agarwal and so on.

The matches will be played on the five tables installed at the Academy.

“This is the first time in Odisha that a cue sport centre has five tables. We hope this will be convenient for the players now,” said Das.

Each match will be of a maximum duration of one hour. The junior and sub-junior finals will be best of five frames while the senior finals in billiards will be 150 up best of seven frames and in snooker it would be best of 11 frames. The highlight of the series is the selections for national events from among the top performers of the state championship. Two players from each group will be chosen for the upcoming national championships to be hosted in Uttar Pradesh during January-February, 2014.

“From youngsters to seniors, all have practiced hard to reach the higher level of the game. Hopefully, the best of us may be selected so as to get the state some titles in the Nationals,” said Das, who is also the coach of most of the participating players.