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Pankaj top-seeded

By Our Sports Reporter

NEW DELHI AUG. 1. National champion Pankaj Advani has been top seeded for the BSFI selection tournament to pick Indian team for the October World snooker championship.

Advani is coming here after a fruitful tour of New Zealand, where he made it to the quarterfinals of the under-21 World championship. The selection tournament will be held at the NSCI Club here from August 11 to 16.

The selection has been necessitated after a few top players gave a miss to the 2002-03 Jammu Nationals.

"The Billiards and Snooker Federation of India (BSFI), at its Annual General meeting, has decided to have the selection trials before every major events as the top two players may not maintain the same form throughout the season as they had during the Nationals,'' said the BSFI Vice-President Ravi K. Tandon.

While Advani and the former Asian and National champion Yasin Merchant have been given the proper ranking, Alok Kumar has been placed third ahead of Dharminder Lilly, who took that position in Jammu. In fact, Alok Kumar was knocked out in the pre-quarterfinal stage itself.

Among the top eight of the Jammu Nationals, Brijesh Damani and Kamal Chawla have found no place in the selection tournament. Instead, Alok and Manan Chandra get a look in.

The players will be divided into two groups of four each for the league matches. The top two from each group will move into the semifinals. The finalists at this tournament will represent India in the World championship to be held in Jiang Min City, China.

Meanwhile, the BSFI has decided to host the 2003 World billiards championship, in Hyderabad in November.

The seedings: 1. Pankaj Advani, 2. Yasin Merchant, 3. Alok Kumar, 4. Siddharth Parikh, 5. Varun Taneja, 6. Dharminder Lilly, 7. Manan Chandra, 8. Rafat Habib.

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