Top seed Pankaj Advani and third seed Sumit Talwar of Punjab crashed out in the second round of the CCI All India Open Snooker Championship played at the CCI’s Wilson Jones Billiards Room in Mumbai on Friday.
Second seed Aditya Mehta survived a scare from former two-time Asian Snooker champion Yasin Merchant winning by a whisker at 5-4.
Kamal Chawla of Indian Railway dished out a stupendous effort to shut the doors on Advani as he coasted to a rather comfortable 5-2 win in the best-of-nine frame contest. Advani was unable to stop fine run of Chawla, who clinched a deserving 64-19, 37-80, 80-56,12-63,110-25, 68-55 and 68-40 victory.
The reigning National champion Talwar meekly succumbed to a 1-5 defeat at the hands of Sourav Kothari of PSPB. Sundeep Gulati of Delhi and Maharashtra’s Rahul Sachdev were engaged in absorbing tussle for supremacy before the former managed to come through by a hard-earned 5-4 verdict in a long drawn.