Snooker: Chawla takes on Chandra in semis
The Railway employee will take on Delhi’s Manan Chandra in the semifinals.
Earlier, Manan defeated in the quarterfinals Vipin Sethi also by the same margin of 4-1. But the first two quarterfinals in the morning session saw both Divya Sharma and Faisal Khan won tough battles to beat their rivals Ayush Kumar and Ishpreet Chadha by an identical margin of 4-2. Now Chanda will take on Sharma in the other semifinal.
Unlike the matches that Kamal Chawla and Manan Chandra won in the afternoon, the morning session had the competitors on their toes.
Divya Sharma was down 0-2 with his potting going awry and came became nicely to take the last four frames to grab the semifinal spot. But what was surprising was the way Ayush Kumar capitulated after getting a big break of 85 points in the second frame. It is another matter that Divya got a 60-point break to win the third frame at 70-0 and in the next won 62-61 in a close frame score but went from strength to strength to wrap it up 39-70, 15-91, 70-0621-61, 57-56, 47-19.
As for Ishpreet Chadha, the story was no different as he too trailed by two frames but won 52-77, 63-70, 126-1, 72-46, 57-33, 80-39 which included two big breaks of 52 on his first visit and 74 in the second which sealed the fate of his rival. Chadha’s domination was complete as he notched up very good scores in the last three frames to claim his semifinal berth.
Manan Chandra, on the other hand, didn’t have any difficulty against Vipin Sethi as did Kamal Chawla against Pushpender Singh. Manan began on a high note and ended exactly the same way in a high-scoring match. Though he opened with a 100-55 score in the first frame, his big break came in the second where he scored 81 points on a single visit to sound out a clear warning to his rival.
Chawla, talking on his semifinal meeting with Manan, said that it was not going to be all that easy. “Manan is in a good form and I have to be extra cautious in the semis,” said the bronze medal winner from the Asian Championships last fortnight at Dubai.
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