CHENNAI: GM Surya Shekar Ganguly of IOCL defeated GM Vidit Santosh Gujrathi of ONGC to win the individual title at the 28th inter-unit PSPB chess tournament, organised by BPCL here on Saturday. He tallied six points.
Gujrathi bagged the second position with 5.5 points, while GM GN Gopal of BPCL secured third position also with 5.5 points. GM MR Lalith Babu of IOCL was adjudged Player of the Tournament. Abhishek Maheswari of HPCL bagged the Best Unrated Player award.
Railway Institute win
M Suriyah’s century and Santhosh Gopi’s 91 enabled Southern Railway Institute to beat Parry’s Sports and Recreation Club by 82 runs in a TNCA Second Division Elite Group match.
S Raghunath’s unbeaten ton for Southern Railway Institute went in vain as he did not receive good support from his team’s lower order batsman.
Brief scores, Elite: TI Cycles Sports and Recreation Club 210/50 ovs (Vision Panchal 62 no; Senthil Nathan 4/46) bt Nelson Sports Club 158 in 42.1 ovs (Shikhar Hukku 59; M Poiyamozhi 3/37, R Sanjay Yadav 3/28). Aruna Cricket Club 130 in 48.3 ovs (R Amith Singh 43 no; R Rajkumar 3/23, E Selva Kumar 3/18) lost to Royapettah Cricket Club 131/7 in 36.2 ovs (C Madhu 3/19). Parry’s Sports and Recreation Club 345/6 in 50 ovs (M Suriyah 111, M Santhosh Gopi 91, Aashish Srikrishnan 77 no; P Prashanth 3/71) bt Southern Railway Institute 263/7 in 50 ovs (S Raghunath 102 no; A Baskar 43).
II Division Plate: ICF Sports Association 246/9 in 50 ovs (S Sundhan Sanjeevi Kandepan 76, V Bharath Hariharan 56; S Vasanth Saravanan 3/49) bt Swaraj Cricket Club 244/7 in 50 ovs (S Vasanth Saravanan 89, S Abishiek 47, Athiraj Shandilya 40).
Southern Railway Sports Association 92/25.3 ovs (D Karthick 4/35, D Sudhan 4/24) lost to Sir Theagaraya Recreation Club 96/3 in 16.5 ovs.
Balaji triumphs
Coimbatore native N Sriram Balaji celebrated his 28th birthday with a singles title in the India F5 ITF Futures tennis tournament in Bengaluru on Saturday. The second seed defeated fellow Davis Cupper and top seed Prajnesh Gunneswaran 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 in the all-Tamil Nadu final (the latter is from Chennai) that lasted almost three hours.
For Balaji, the victory was also sweet revenge of sorts as he had lost to Prajnesh in the last ITF event in Bhilai. The triumph also fetched him $2,162 in prize money, while Prajnesh took home a total of $1,272.