Indians confident of medals in cue sports

Doha, Dec 3 (UNI) Former world champions Pankaj Advani, Geet Sethi along with Ashok Shandilya will lead the Indian challenge in a world-class field in the cue events starting at the Asian Games here tomorrow.

Quality is the essence of this competition with a large number of current and former world champions in the fray. Snooker and English Billiards events will start with players from India, China and Thailand among the top medal contenders.

Pankaj Advani is the is the only player to have won the IBSF World Championship in both in Snooker (2003) and Billiards (2005), a feat that earned the 21-year-old India's highest sports honour -- Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award.

In Billiards, 2005 double (time and short format) world and Asian champion Pankaj Advani and 2002 IBSF champion Ashok Shandilya will start as medal favourites but will have to get past top seed and 2002 Asian Games double gold medal winner Praput Chaitanasakun of Thailand.

Another strong medal prospect is Peter Gilchrist of Singapore, the English-born world professional billiards champion in 1994 and 2001, Shandilya and Geet Sethi had partnered to win Gold in 1998 Bangkok Asiad and the duo hopes to repeat that performance here this time.

The Indian Billiards team which is adept at playing in the time format will have to change to the pints format. It will be a 100 point frame and a best of five frames in the preliminary rounds and from semi-final the matches will be best of seven frames.

Ashok Shandilya is happy with point frame format saying, ''My game is suited to this system. I am in good form.'' However, Advani had something different to say.

''Time format is different than the point format. We are used to the former so adjustments are necessary.

''With some good practice sessions during the preparatory and selection camps we have ironed out the grey areas and are now ready for the event,'' he added.

Indian national champion Manan Chandra is a medal hope for the country in snooker.

He has been in good form and made it to the semi-finals of this year's IBSF World Championship. Two-time Asian champion and last Games doubles Gold medallist Yasin Merchant is another hope for the country.

Apart from these two, Aditya Mehta and Rupesh Shah are also going to represent India in snooker.

China's Ding Junhui, the 2002 Gold medal winner has been top seeded in the snookers singles. He is in tremendous form, having stacked up 32 centuries. If Ding, ranked 27 in the world, maintains his form then he will be unstoppable.

There is hardly any chance for Indians in 8-Ball and 9-Ball pool events.

Manan Chandra and Alok Kumar will be taking part in these events.

Indian women cueists Anuja and Meenal Thakur, Vidya Pillai, M Chitra and Uma Devi will figure in pool events.

India had won three medals in cue sports -- a Gold, Silver and Bronze -- at Busan and it remains to be seen whether the tally will go up, remain the same or reduce.

UNI HSB DH PM1347