Former world champions Ashok Shandilya of Railways and Rupesh Shah of ONGC lead a strong field of 32 cueists, who will be vying for top honours in the Cricket Club of India organized CCI Billiards Classic 2018, to be played at the Club’s Wilson Jones Billiards Rood starting from Monday, August 13 to Saturday, August 18, 2018. This will be a time-format tournament.
Ashok Shandilya
The other heavyweights, who will be seen in action, are Former World Team gold medalists Devendra Joshi of BPCL, former two-time Asian Champion Dhruv Sitwala of ONGC and his teammates Alok Kumar and Saurabh Kothari, both of whom are also former winners of the Asian Championship titles. The other stronger contenders include, former World Championship bronze medalists, Siddharth Parikh of Railways and Dhvaj Haria of Indian Oil.
Sanju Kothari, Chairman of the Tournament organizing committee was excited to have the top players participating in the tournament. “The Cricket Club of India has have been instrumental in supporting Billiards and Snooker in the country. Witnessing the best international players of India will be a visual treat,” Kothari said.
Rupesh Shah,
The big guns will be joined by leading players from Mumbai, including Maharashtra’s the top-four ranked billiards players and Maharashtra Junior No.1 ranked billiards player to form a strong field of 32 players.
The 32 players will be drawn in eight groups of four each and will initially compete in a round-robin league and the top players from each group will qualify for the knockout phase starting from the pre-quarter-finals.
The tournament offers a total prize fund of Rs 3.8 lakhs with the champion standing to pocket the top prize of Rs 125,000 while the runner-up would earn a prize award of Rs 75,000. The two losing semi-finalists would receive Rs 40,000 each and the four losing quarter-finalists will take home Rs 20,000 each. In addition a cash prize of Rs 10,000 will be presented to the player with the highest break and another sum of Rs 10,000 to the player with maximum number of doubles century breaks.
The duration of matches during the group phase will be of 90 minutes, the pre-quarter-finals will be played over 120 minutes. It will become more competitive from the next round as the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final will be played over a longer 150 minutes time format.