Chitra wins women’s snooker title at Manisha Nationals

Abhishek Manroa January 28, 2012 0

Chitra wins women’s snooker title at Manisha Nationals

PUNE: Former world billiards champion M Chitra finally redeemed herself after years of toil and won her maiden national title, winning the women’s snooker championship beating Neena Praveen of Tamil Nadu at the Manisha-National Billiards and Snooker championship on Saturday.

The tournament is being organized by the Billiards and Snooker Association of Maharashtra (BSAM) at the PYC Hindu Gymkhana.

It has been Chitra’s dream to win national title for a long time, but somehow she would lose nerves at crucial junctures.

Even after she won the world title in 2007, her confidence at the national would always flicker—something that she overcame with her confident potting in a late evening match on Saturday at the PYC Hindu Gymkhana.

Starting her game tentatively, Chitra opened up good lead against Neena, also the first time finalist, before taking the first frame58-43.

The Bangalore cueist, who had an easy outing in the league stages, wrapped up the second frame 57-28 to give her good cushion to bank on.

Neena resorted to safety play in the third frame that became too dour as no player was taking chance of potting reds and clearing the table.

Instead, snooking the cue ball behind a colour ball became routine before the frame meandered into a position wherein black-ball came into play.

Neena took the black ball to take the frame 35-32, but Chitra was ready to start afresh in the fourth frame as she raced to a comfortable lead before wrapping up the frame 44-9 for a worthy 3-1 win.

Pune girl Arantxa Sanchis, who became national billiards champion a couple of days ago, was unlucky to find podium in the snooker championship after she lost the placing match for the No 3 position to Delhi youngster Keerath Bhandaal.

Arantxa in fact took crucial 1-0 lead by winning the first frame 42-37, but then Keerath rallied brilliantly to take the next two 51-21, 52-48 with the deciding frame going into the black ball.

Results: Women’s Snooker Final:

Chitra M (Kar) bt Neena Praveen (TN) 3-1 (58-43, 57-28, 32-35, 44-9).

For third and fourth Position: Keerath Bhandaal (Del) bt Arantxa Sanchis (Mah) 2-1 (37-42, 51-21, 52-48).