Pankaj Advani

Calcutta: Pankaj Advani, Ashok Shandilya, Rupesh Shah and Sourav Kothari are the top four seeds, respectively, after the conclusion of the league stage of senior billiards in the BRC-Gloster National Billiards & Snooker Championship being held, here, at the Bengal Rowing Club.

The top 16 will now fight it out in the pre-quarters, with the final scheduled on January 17.

The pre-quarters will see Pankaj pitted against 16th seed Manish Jain, while Shandilya locks horns with Jaiveer Dhingra and Rupesh Shah faces Nikhil Ghadge. Defending champion Sourav Kothari clashes with Dhvaj Haria.

Sourav defeated RSPB’s Rafath Habib 101-36, 101-26, 100-12.

Pankaj and Ashok are simply on top of their game, having lost just one frame each in the league stage. On Wednesday, Pankaj smashed Maharashtra’s Dhingra 3-0, with the scoreline reading 100(96)-10, 103-15, 103-10.

In his next match, though, Durga Prasad of RSPB managed to put up a fight, winning the second frame 101-28. But barring that second frame, the world billiards and snooker champion won the other frames 101-09, 101-02, 103-58.

No wonder Manish will have his task cut out against the top cueist, but count the Bengal No. 1 out at your own peril. Manish was simply solid on Wednesday, beating Abhimanyu Gandhi 101-84, 100-66, 100-26.

Talking of Shandilya, he had it easy over Brijesh Damani 100-0, 102-44, 102-31 before winning 100-04, 101-84, 101-32 against Jharkhand’s Anseth Pareira.

“The top 16 is quite a challenging field. It will be very difficult to predict a winner. Any of the players, on their day, can surprise even the best,” chief national coach Manoj Kothari said.