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Indian Open Wildcard Qualifying Tournaments

Postby roy142857

The wildcards for the Indian Open will be decided through a series of qualifying tournaments, the first of which has just commenced.

The final qualifying tournament in Pune from 15th September will have 24 players - the 8 top players (not 100% sure what this means, but last season they were the 8 quarter finalists from the Indian Championship, which would include winner and sometime Pro Pankaj Advani, and none of those players is in the first tournament), plus 16 qualifiers, 4 from each of 4 qualifying tournaments in New Delhi, Chennai, Indore and Mumbai.

New Delhi started on Saturday (top seed is Manan Chandra), although I haven't seen many results yet.

For the record, the top 8 at the Indian Championship were:

Pankaj Advani (1)
Kamal Chawla (3)
Brijesh Damani (4)
Dharminder Lilly (5)
Faisal Khan (6)
Sundeep Gulati (13)
Laxman Rawat (8)
Shivam Arora (7)

EDIT 3rd September - I've added in the Cue Sports India ranking for the 8 players above (and noting that Pro Aditya Mehta is ranked 2)

Re: Indian Open Wildcard Qualifying Tournaments

Postby roy142857

No real surprises in the Last 64 or Last 32 stage of the Delhi tournament, so results from the Last 16 and Quarter finals (which decide the 4 qualifiers for the final qualifying tournament):

Last 16
Rajat Khaneja 4 - 1 Manan Chandra
Anuj Uppal 4 - 1 Sahil Nayyar
Pushpender Singh 4 - 3 Ayush Kumar
Alok Kumar 4 - 0 Ishpreet Chadha
Anmoldeep Singh 4 - 1 Divya Sharma
Varun Madan 4 - 3 Manjot Singh
Akshay Kumar 4 - 1 Sumesh Turki
Sumit Talwar 4 - 0 Vijay Goel

Quarter finals

Anuj Uppal 4 - 3 Rajat Khaneja
Alok Kumar 4 - 2 Pushpender Singh
Varun Madan 4 - 0 Anmoldeep Singh
Sumit Talwar 4 - 3 Akshay Kumar

So through to the final qualifying are (with their Cue Sports India ranking in brackets):

Alok Kumar (28 - but No. 1 in billiards rankings)
Varun Madan (11)
Sumit Talwar (20)
Anuj Uppal (37)

Re: Indian Open Wildcard Qualifying Tournaments

Postby roy142857

So the results of the Chennai tournament from Last 16 on, quite a lot of players in the area who don't play nationally (rather away from the other areas where snooker is played a lot), biggest surprise being the 16th ranked player nationally, Rafath Habib, not making it through:

Last 16

Rafath Habib 4 - 1 R Loganathan
Neeraj Kumar 4 - 3 S Magesh
R Girish 4 - 2 I V Rajiv
Balaji Reddy 4 - 3 G Prabhu
Pranit Ramchandani 4 - 0 Naveen
Vijay Nichani 4 - 1 Peter Paul
Varun Kumar 4 - 1 Himanshu Jain
Yogesh Kumar 4 - 3 S A Saleem

Quarter Finals

Neeraj Kumar 4 - 3 Rafath Habib
R Girish 4 - 2 Balaji Reddy
Vijay Nichani 4 - 3 Pranit Ramchandani
Varun Kumar 4 - 2 Yogesh Kumar


Semi finals
R Girish 4 - 1 Neeraj Kumar
Varun Kumar 4 - 3 Vijay Nichani

Final
Varun Kumar 4 - 3 R Girish

So going through to the final qualifying tournament are (with their Cue Sports India ranking) :

R Girish (=107)
Neeraj Kumar (53)
Varun Kumar (22)
Vijaj Nichani (=107)

The Indore tournament has drawn some of the top players who haven't yet qualified, including Rafath Habib having another go having missed out in his home tournament.
Other notable players include Manan Chandra (9th in Cue Sports India ranking), Pushpender Singh (12th), Shahbaaz Khan (14th), Ketan Chawla (15th), Rajat Khaneja (19th) and Rahul Sachdev (27th).

Re: Indian Open Wildcard Qualifying Tournaments

Postby roy142857

So the results from Indore

Last 16
Manan Chandra 4-0 Anmoldeep Singh
Hritik Jain 4 - 2 Johnson Narsidani
Rajat Khaneja 4 - 0 Abhimanyu Gandhi
S. Dilip Kumar 4 - 3 Sahil Nayyar
Rafath Habib 4 - 3 Aditya Rajawat
Rahul Sachdev 4 - 3 Bharat Sisodiya
Pushpender Singh 4 - 2 Ketan Chawla
Shahbaaz Adil Khan 4 - 1 Anurag Giri

Quarter finals
Manan Chandra 4-0 Hritik Jain
Rajat Khaneja 4 - 0 S. Dilip Kumar
Rafath Habib 4 - 3 Rahul sachdev
Pushpender Singh 4 - 2 Shahbaaz Adil Khan

The four qualifiers for the next stage (with Cue Sports India ranking) are:

Manan Chandra (9)
Rafath Habib (16)
Rajat Khaneja (19)
Pushpender Singh (12)

Re: Indian Open Wildcard Qualifying Tournaments

Postby roy142857

The draw's out for the last of the first round tournaments, which takes place in Mumbai from 9th September.

Top ranked player is Rahul Sachdev (14), with Nitesh Madan (21), Akshay Kumar (23), Himanshu Jain (24), Rahul Sachdev (27) and Manish Jain (27) the other favourites to take one of the four remaining places in the final qualifying tournament, 82 players in this one, other names to note include Siddharth Parikh and Dhvaj Haria, both handy snooker players who have recently been concentrating on billiards, so are further down the snooker rankings.

Other good players include Vipin Premi and five local players Hasan Badami, Ishpreet Chadha, Rovin D'Souza, Vishal Vaya and Nikhil Ootam. Ootam's unseeded, which surprises me, could be up against Akshay Kumar rather early in the tournament.

Re: Indian Open Wildcard Qualifying Tournaments

Postby roy142857

Vishal Vaya lost out in the Last 64, a surprise to me but not to the locals it appears, his vanquisher Gaurav Jaisinghani (who won 4-3) is from the Vashi area of Mumbai, he doesn't generally compete in national tournaments but has won several city or state-wide tournaments.

The draw has been made for the final qualifying tournament, and confirms that Pankaj Advani will play the Indian Open as an amateur (as expected). Six groups of 4, then group winners each play a group runner-up for one of the wild card places at the main Indian Open.

Group A
Pankaj Advani
Rajat Khaneja
Neeraj Kumar
Mumbai qualifier 1

Group B
Kamal Chawla
J Varun Kumar
Alok Kumar
Mumbai qualifier 4

Group C
Brijesh Damani
Varun Madan
R Girish
Rafath Habib

Group D
Dharminder Lilly
Pushpender Singh
Anuj Uppal
Mumbai qualifier 2

Group E
Faisal Khan
Shivam Arora
Manan Chandra
Mumbai qualifier 3

Group F
Sundeep Gulati
Laxman Rawat
Sumit Talwar
Vijay Nichani

Re: Indian Open Wildcard Qualifying Tournaments

Postby roy142857

Well, the form books in tatters (well, parts of it) in the Mumbai tournament

A bit of nonsense by myself above, as I mentioned Rahul Sachdev as both 14th and 27th ranked player. It's Shahbaaz Khan who's 14th, and my missing him out obviously caused a lack of confidence so he crashed out in the Last 64 to 131st ranked Sunil Jain!

Also a surprise loss for Ishpreet Singh Chadha in the Last 64, going down to a player from Surat called Anas Ali - a report on that match and Hasan Badami's narrow escape against Mukund Bharadia is at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/spor ... 286650.cms

Badami won his last 32 4-0, Anas Ali lost at that stage to Nikhil Saigal

And also in the Last 64, Nitesh Madan (ranked 21) went out to Manav Panchal, leading player for the Malabar Hill Club in the Mumbai Inter Clubs league.

I'd mentioned Rovin D'Souza as one of the leading local players (ranked 63rd nationally), he went out in the Last 32 to another local player, =107th ranked Yogesh Sharma.

Nikhil Ootam lost 4-1 to Akshay Kumar in the Last 32.

Gaurav Jaisinghani made it through to the Last 16, but in one of the two Last 16 matches that have been played, lost 4 - 0 to Siddharth Parikh, who now plays Vipin Premi for a place in the final qualifying tournament.

Remaining Last 16 matches to be played

Akshay Kumar v Mohammad Shoab Khan
Dhvaj Haria v Manish Jain

Sunil Jain v Hasan Badami
Manav Panchal v Rahul Sachdev

Taha Khan v Yogesh Sharma
Nikhil Saigal v Himanshu Jain

EDIT - Taha Khan's another local leagues player, playing for the Palazo club, =131st player S Magesh was the seed in that part of the draw but not surprised he's not through to the Last 16.

Re: Indian Open Wildcard Qualifying Tournaments

Postby roy142857

Last 16 results

Siddharth Parikh 4 - 0 Gaurav Jaisinghani
Vipin Premi 4 - 1 Johnson Narsidani

Akshay Kumar 4 - 2 Mohammad Shoaib Khan
Manish Jain 4 - 3 Dhvaj Haria

Hasan Badami 4 - 1 Sutil Jain
Rahul Sachdev 4 - 2 Manav Panchal

Yogesh Sharma 4 - 3 Taka Khan
Himanshu Jain 4 - 0 Nikhil Saigal

Quarter finals

Siddharth Parikh 4 - 0 Vipin Premi
Manish Jain 4 - 0 Akshay Kumar
Hasan Badami 4 - 2 Rahul Sachdev
Himanshu Jain 4 - 1 Yogesh Sharma

So the qualifiers for the final qualifying tournament (with their Cue Sports India ranking) are:

Hasan Badami (37)
Himanshu Jain (23)
Manish Jain (30)
Siddharth Parikh (33, also 8th in billiard rankings)

Re: Indian Open Wildcard Qualifying Tournaments

Postby roy142857

Group A was won by Pankaj Advani, with Neeraj Kimar the runner-up.

Group B was won by Kamal Chawla, with Alok Kumar the runner-up.

Group E was won by Manan Chandra, with Faisal Khan the runner-up.

Three groups with 1 match to update, in Group C Brijesh Damani is through, Varun Madan still has to play Damani and mustn't lose by more than one frame, or R Girish will go through.

In Group D Pushpender Singh needs to beat Dharminder Lilly by at least 2 frames, Lilly needs to avoid that. Whatever the outcome of that match, 2nd place Anuj Uppal will go through to the final play-offs.

In Group F Sumit Talwar has completed his matches undefeated. The group runner-up will be the winner of Sundeep Gulati v Laxman Rawat.

Re: Indian Open Wildcard Qualifying Tournaments

Postby Wildey

So Pankaj Advani bottled playing a top 64 player to get in to the India Open in favor of playing inferior opponents to be a Wild Card.

In China Former tour players cant play as a Wild Cards any more.

Re: Indian Open Wildcard Qualifying Tournaments

Postby fridge46

Wildey wrote:So Pankaj Advani bottled playing a top 64 player to get in to the India Open in favor of playing inferior opponents to be a Wild Card.

In China Former tour players cant play as a Wild Cards any more.


Wasnt he ranked in the top 64? So would have played someone seeded 65-128?

Re: Indian Open Wildcard Qualifying Tournaments

Postby Wildey

fridge46 wrote:
Wildey wrote:So Pankaj Advani bottled playing a top 64 player to get in to the India Open in favor of playing inferior opponents to be a Wild Card.

In China Former tour players cant play as a Wild Cards any more.


Wasnt he ranked in the top 64? So would have played someone seeded 65-128?

OK he Bottled it full stop then.

Re: Indian Open Wildcard Qualifying Tournaments

Postby roy142857

Final qualifying matches (winners to Indian Open)

Pankaj Advani 4 - 0 Rafath Habib
Faisal Khan 4 - 2 Kamal Chawla
Neeraj Kumar 4 - 1 Manan Chandra
Brijesh Damani 4 - 2 Anuj Uppal
Dharminder Lilly 4 - 3 Laxman Rawat
Sumit Talwar 4 - 3 Alok Kumar

So the top ranked players certainly didn't have it all their own way in this. Qualifiers by Cue Sports India's newly updated rankings (in which Pro Aditya Mehta is No.1) are:

2. Pankaj Advani
4. Brijesh Damani
5. Dharminder Lilly
6. Faisal Khan
21. Sumit Talwar
44. Neeraj Kumar

Shame they now can't take their form into the tournament but have to wait until next spring ...