Titan Sethi regains title after a decade

MORE THAN A HANDFUL...Geet Sethi of Gujarat proudly displays the Alfred Waston Trophy, which he won in the National Billiards Championship ...

MORE THAN A HANDFUL…Geet Sethi of Gujarat proudly displays the Alfred Waston Trophy, which he won in the National Billiards Championship on Saturday.

BANGALORE, June 21: Champions belong to a class goes an old adage in sports. The manner in which world No 2 Geet Sethi steamrolled Railways’ Ashok Shandilya by a 2353-914 margin to regain the national title after a decade at the Titan PSI 2000 63rd Senior National Billiards and 21st Junior Billiards & Snooker championships on Saturday added impetus to the adage.

Shandilya, who had gone into lead before the interval, was left marvelling the class, competence and cueing abilities of the 36-year-old from Gujarat, whose name is synonymous with the game. His potting, cannoning and getting in-offs with regularity proved his class.

Shandilya came up with a break of 259 on his ninth visit to take a lead of 305-59, which helped him go into the interval 376-254 ahead with Sethi on an unfinished 28. In between, Sethi had replied Shandilya’s double century break with a 152, but the squandering of a red in-off when well positioned at the top of the table ended the break.

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On resumption, number 13 proved to be lucky for Sethi as he compiled a break of 242 in just 10 minutes to seize the lead. Sethi had trailed 254-380 at the start of that visit and when he finished the scoreboard read 496-380 in his favour.

Sethi’s improvement of lead began with a 80 on his 16th visit. The visit terminated in Sethi himself calling a foul-stroke on a red pot. Sethi `pushed’ the cue-ball instead of `hitting’ it and when he realised his mistake, he headed towards the chair even before referee Jairaj gave a judgment. As Jairaj put it later, “I noticed the foul, but before I could call it, Sethi had sat on his chair, which showed his respect for the rules of the game.”

Sethi displayed one of the finest form as he came up with breaks of 210 (18th visit), 356 (14th), 113 (24th), 349 (32nd), 100 (32nd). The 356 he potted in just 14 minutes earned him a Rs 3,000 cheque for highest break of the championship.

MULTANI SUSPENDED: The billiards sub-committee of the Billiards & Snooker Federation of India (BSFI) decided to suspend last year’s champion Sonic Multani from further participation in the championship, which leaves Bhaskar as the third-placed cueist.

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The decision was taken after Multani conceded his semi-final tie to Shandilya, citing indisposition, according to a press release from the tournament sub-committee which met here last night.

The committee decided “unanimously to suspend Sonic from the championship due to his unsportsmanlike behaviour not only in this championship, but other open tournaments all over the country.” It added: “This decision was also taken for his misbehaviour with the BSFI official in front of the press and others, particularly because the sport is above everything and the status of the individual does not matter. It was further resolved to withdraw his prize-money.”

Attending the meeting was BSFI secretary Charanjit Kapur who had exchanged words with Multani in the media room earlier .