Pankaj Advani wins national billiards championship

AGRA - Pankaj Advani, who recently won the world’s professional Billiards tournament, on Sunday, defeated the former world Champion Geeth Sethi in the National Billiards Championship.

Advani beat Sethi, in 5-4 frames. Incidentally, Advani made a comeback in the final rounds after trailing 2-4 frames at one stage.

With the latest win Advani registered a third victory in a row.

Speaking to reporters after the win Advani said: “There is a lot of competition in billiards in India. It’s almost equivalent to world championship. It’s hard to win the national championship.”

” I have won this for the third time in a row. I’m very happy,” Advani added.

On his part, Sethi said that he enjoyed playing the match against a tough opponent.

“This is one of the best finals. I don’t think there was any other finals of this standard have been played at the national level so far. Both players played well. Eventually the better player always wins, Sethi opined.

“Pankaj played very well towards the end of the game. In spite of being 4-2 down, he made a comeback. It was a display of mental strength. It’s a victory of youth the power of youth. It was a level game, equal game. I enjoyed it a lot,” Sethi added.

For Advani who is known as the King of the Green Baize, this victory marked another milestone in his extraordinary competitive career that commenced in 1997 with title wins in B S Sampath and TA Selvaraj memorial tourneys at Bangalore. (ANI)