Chawla tops in camp

 Kamal Chawla, who finished runner-up to Aditya Mehta in this year’s National Snooker Championship, topped the selection camp held in Hyderabad for the IBSF World Snooker Championship.

Brijesh Damani secured the second spot, joining Chawla as India’s two entrants for the world bash, scheduled to be held in Egypt from Nov 16-29.

National billiards champion Arantxa Sanchis and seasoned campaigner Vidya Pillai finished first and second respectively in the women’s camp to seal their spots.

Alok Kumar, Dhruv Sitwala, Arun Agarwal and B Bhaskar qualified for the World Billiards Championships at the camp that was held simultaneously. Devendra Joshi secured qualification by virtue of his world ranking while former champions Pankaj Advani, Geet Sethi, Ashok Shandilya and Rupesh Shah received automatic entries.

Reigning ladies world champion R Umadevi Nagaraj and BSFI nominees Arantxa and Dhvaj Haria will also participate in the event, dates and venue of which will be finalised by the end of the month.

Rankings: Men: Snooker: Kamal Chawla 1; Brijesh Damani 2; Lucky Vatnani 3; Rafath Habib 4; Shahbaaz Adil Khan 5; Manan Chandra 6; Siddharth Parikh 7; Himanshu Jain 8; Neeraj Kumar 9; IH Manudev 10.

Billiards: Alok Kumar 1; Dhruv Sitwala 2; Devendra Joshi 3; Arun Agarwal 4; B Bhaskar 5; Siddharth Parikh 6; V Subramaniam 7; K Venkatesham 8.
Women: Snooker: Arantxa Sanchis 1; Vidya Pillai 2; Chitra Magimairaj 3; Neena Praveen 4; Suniti Damani 5; Keerat Bhandal 6.