BENGALURU: The organisers of 85th National Billiards Championship 2018 played ‘to err is human’ card as the tournament witnessed some chaos at Karnataka State Billiards Association on Friday. Some of the R32 matches were brought to halt midway after Rishabh Thakkar, who was scheduled to play at 6 pm, pointed out the error.
After being informed by Rishabh, the organisers realised the mistake where some players were wrongly reseeded for the R32 draw. Besides Rishabh, Siddharth Parikh had also identified the error.
With no action on the green baize for around 30 minutes, it had the potential to become a sticky situation.
“It was a human error of miscalculation. Rishabh pointed out about it. He came to me and said this is what has happened. Immediately, we stopped 2-3 matches which we thought would be affected. Later when we saw everything was affected, we stopped all the matches,” Kishore Khurana, chief referee said.
Matters looked complicated as some top players like Pankaj Advani and Rupesh Shah had already emerged victorious in their respective matches before the mistake was identified. The organisers owned up and informed players, besides Pankaj, to replay their matches, which were completed late evening.
“Pankaj’s match was not affected as he was getting the same seed and draw. Other 15 matches here and there got affected due to the seedings. All the players have taken it lightly and they are cooperating. No one objected,” Kishore added.
Cueist Devendra Joshi, who was also playing his R32 match at the time the confusion erupted, hopes that such mistakes do not occur again. “Whatever has happened, they have rectified it, which will be fair for all concerned if you play per proper draw. I am okay with whatever decision has been taken. However, such things should be avoided in the future,” Joshi said.
Big guns progress
The competition for top honours at the green baize in the ongoing 58th National Billiard Championship 2018 is getting tough.Top contenders from PSPB, including Pankaj Advani, Alok Kumar, Rupesh Shah, Sourav Kothari among others, have progressed into the pre-quarters while the road came to an end for some cueists like Durga Prasad.
Decent crowd turned out to witness some high quality performance from the national regulars. After a dominant display by top players on Friday, they will look to come all guns blazing with some big matches set for Saturday.
Selected R32 results: Pankaj Advani (PSPB) bt D.Bhuvaneswaran (TN) 3-0; Alok Kumar (PSPB) bt Prem Prakash (TN) 3 – 0; Rupesh Shah (PSPB) bt Sasha Sambi (KAR) 3-0; Devendra Joshi (PSPB) bt Neeraj Kumar (RSPB) 3-0; B.Bhaskar (KAR) bt Subrat Das (ODI) 3-0; S.Shrikrishna (TN) bt Durga Prasad (RSPB) 3-0; Dhruv Sitwala (PSPB) bt S.Simhachalam (RSPB) 3-0; Siddharth Parikh (RSPB) bt Manish Jain (WB) 3-1; Dhvaj Haria (PSPB) beat Rishabh Kumar (MAH) 3-0; Sourav Kothari (PSPB) bt D.Raj Kumar (KAR) 3-0.