Interesting and absorbing contests can be on playing cards as India’s ace cueist Pankaj Advani, winner of 25 World titles, Dhruv Sitwala, the present Indian No. 2, Peter Gilchrist of Singapore, winner of a number of world titles and Rob Hall of England can be competing for the highest honours within the Rs 10 lakh prize-money CCI Classic Invitation Billiards (time format) Championship, beginning right here on Friday, April 14. Besides the 4 sturdy contenders, the opposite challengers from throughout the nation embrace the defending champion Siddharth Parikh, former world champions Rupesh Shah, Sourav Kothari, Ashok Shandilya, Devendra Joshi and S. Srikrishna to call a couple of within the occasion organised by the Cricket Club of India (CCI) and to be performed on the membership’s Sir Wilson Jones billiards corridor from April 14 to twenty, 2023.

The CCI occasions have proved to be fairly profitable for Advani who early this 12 months received the CCI Classic Snooker crown defeating Englishman Stephen Lee within the remaining, will hope to take care of the successful momentum and add the billiards crown to his huge collections. Meanwhile, Sitwala, who had late final 12 months completed runner-up dropping to Brijesh Damani within the nationwide billiards finals, can be hoping to place up an improved displaying and emerge champion.

The 55-year-old Gilchrist could be the person to beat. The lanky cueist received his first World Billiards Championship in 1994 in India and thereafter has collected eight extra World titles, and is the agency favorite to complete with the highest honours. Meanwhile, the 39-year-old Englishman Hall, a 3-time World Championship finalist, boasts of getting received 9 English championships titles and nearly 60 English rating occasions and would hope to make this journey a memorable one by changing into champion.

Featured Videos on TNM

At stake are a whopping championship winner’s cheque of Rs 250,00 and a good-looking trophy and a runner-up cheque of Rs 150,000 and a trophy. The dropping semifinalist will obtain Rs 75,000 every, the dropping quarterfinalists will get Rs 40,000 every and the pre-quarterfinal losers will pocket Rs 15,000 every. The 16 gamers from the teams who fail to qualify for the knockout section will take residence a comfort prize of Rs 10,000 every. An award of Rs 50,000 can be introduced to the participant who constructs the very best break (500 factors and over).

A complete of 24 gamers have been seeded instantly into the principle draw and they are going to be joined by eight gamers who will come by means of after enjoying the knockout qualifying rounds on April 12 and 13. The 32 gamers will then be divided into eight teams of 4 every and the highest two gamers from every group will progress to the knockout pre-quarter-finals. The preliminary rounds can be performed over a two-hour format.

The Groupings:

Group A: Pankaj Advani, Nalin Patel, Loukic Pathare, Qualifier

Group B: Peter Gilchrist, Ashok Shandilya, Okay. Venkatesham, Qualifier

Group C: Rob Hall, Rayaan Razmi, V. Subramanian, Qualifier

Group D: Dhruv Sitwala, Aditya Agrawal, Ishpreet Singh Chhada, Qualifier

Group E: Rupesh Shah, Devendra Joshi, Arun Agrawal, Qualifier

Group F: Siddharth Parikkh, Durga Prasad, Raajeev Sharma, Qualifier

Group G: Ketan Chawla, Dhvaj Haria, Mahesh Jagdale, Qualifier

Group H: Rohan Jambusaria, Sourav Kothari, Vishal Madan, Qualifier.