Reigning National snooker champion and India number one Ishpreet Singh Chadha of Maharashtra and runner-up and India number two Malkeet Singh of Railways are among the top-8 Indian cueists who will be the star attractions during the National Sports Club of India (NSCI) organised Rs 6.4 lakhs prize-money NSCI All India Snooker Open Baulk Line 2022, which commences at the NSCI billiards hall from June 15 to July 2, 2022.
Brijesh Damani (PSPB), Kamal Chawla (Railways), Vijay Nichani (Tamil Nadu), Pushpender Singh (Railways), Laxman Rawat (PSPB) and Shahbaaz Adil Khan (PSPB) are the six other leading Indian contenders who have been directly seeded in the main draw of this one of the richest prize-money tournaments in the country.
Maharashtra number one and two snooker players Kreishh Gurbaxani and Mahesh Jagdale, State junior champion Rayaan Razmi along with wild carders, which include former National champions Sarang Shroff, Manan Chandra, Sourav Kothari, S. Shrikrishna will be the other challengers, who have also been seeded in the main draw. India’s most celebrated cue sports exponent Pankaj Advani and former National champ Aditya Mehta, both due to other commitments are unlikely to feature in this tournament.
The tournament will be played in two phases. The initial phase will be the Qualifying Round (knockout basis) to be played from June 15 and the final on June 26. The second phase, Main Draw, will commence from June 27.
The 16 qualifiers from the first phase will join the 16 seeded players in the main draw, which will be played on a league-cum-knockout format. The 32-players would be divided into 8 groups of 4 players each and play on a round-robin basis from June 27 to 29. The top two players from each group will progress to the pre-quarter-finals. The pre-quarters and quarter-finals are scheduled to be played on June 30, while the semi-finals will be played on July 1 and the grand finale on July 2. Matches from the round-robin league up to the quarter-final will be played on a best-of-7-frame basis, the semi-finals and finals will be best-of-9-frame and best-of-11-frame contests respectively.
The ultimate champion stands to earn a whopping purse of Rs 2 lakhs, while the runner-up will receive a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh, while the two losing semi-finalists would receive a cash award of Rs 35,000 each. The losing quarter-finalists and pre-quarter-finalists will also receive cash prizes.
The qualifying round winner and runner-up will pocket a cash prize of Rs 15,000 and Rs 8,000 respectively, while losing semi-finalists, quarter-finalists and pre-quarter-finalists would all receive cash awards.