QUEEN'S ROAD: Shabbir Dhankot of Tamil Nadu and D M Pavithra of Karnataka won the inaugural Wissen Bangalore Open men’s and women’s tenpin bowling championship title at the Blu O.
Shabbir Dhankot finished at the top in Masters round of eight games with a total pin fall of 1,709 and was followed by N P Singh of Delhi, Akaash Ashok Kumar of Karnataka and Vijay Punjabi of Karnataka in the second, third and fourth places respectively. The top four men qualified for the challenge in the leader format final round.
Third seed Akaash was challenged by 4th seeded Vijay Punjabi of Karnataka. Akaash continued his fine form and beat Vijay Punjabi convincingly at 236-187 and moved on to face second seeded N P Singh of Delhi in the next match. N P Singh bowled tightly and beat Akaash 196-176.
In the finals, top seeded Shabbir and N P Singh began well but Shabbir opened twice in the first five frames giving N P Singh a 17 pin lead. Shabbir then steadied his game closing frame 6 and 7. N P Singh missed two pin tens in the crucial 7th and 8th frames giving some hope to Shabbir. Shabbir had a strike in the 9th frame and had two strikes in the 10th frame to beat N P Singh by two pins in a thriller.
Akaash Ashok Kumar of Karnataka finished third.
Earlier, in the championship’s Men’s graded masters round, Habibur Rahman of Tamil Nadu emerged as the winner with a total of 1,978 pin falls in 10 games. Vivek P of Karnataka finished with 1,977 pins and lost it with a final throw when he could not convert to pin ten in the last frame of his game and lost by one pin. Sudarshan Venkatraman of Tamil Nadu was third with 1,966.
Pavithra D M of Karnataka won the women’s graded category title. The 24-year-old Pavithra, who started the Masters round with two low games of 150 and 126, stepped up her game in the next five rounds to bowl steadily scoring 181, 193, 175, 161 and 171 respectively. Pavithra scored a total pinfall of 1,360 in eight games. Her teammate Swetha Urs continued her fine form from the qualifying rounds to register 1,355 pin falls and lost narrowly by just five pins to finish as the runner-up.