Sport - Billiards & Snooker

Nikhil, Arun fail to turn up

BANGALORE: Nikhil Kapahi of Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab’s Arun Chabra failed to turn up as the week-long selection trials to fill the four remaining berths in the eight-member Indian team for the World under-21 snooker championship to be held in Goa from August 22 to 31, commenced at the KSBA hall here on Wednesday.

The top four in the junior Nationals held in Bangalore this January – Rishab Pandya, Shravan Mohta (both from Maharashtra), Shivam Arora (Bihar) and Younis Kutchey (J&K) — have made the team.

The 10 players attending the trials have been divided into two groups of five each and will play a round-robin league with the top two from each group making the grade.

A super league amongst the four will determine their rankings behind the top four.

Those attending the selection trials are — Ajay Bhushan and Balaji Reddy (Kar), Hasan Badani, Rovin D’Souza (Mah), J. Pranit (TN), Amir Hussain, Shahbaaz Adil Khan (both WB), Pushpendra Singh (Del), Ashish Kumar (AP) and Himanshu Arora (Raj).

In Wednesday’s matches, Amir Hussain of West Bengal overcame Hasan Badani of Maharashtra 4-3.

Balaji Reddy (Kar) and Pushpendra Singh (Del) had it easy against Rovin D’Souza (Mah) and Ashwin Kumar (AP) respectively.

The results: