Brijesh Damani beats Sourav Kothari to win CCI All India Open Snooker Championship
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India Oil's Brijesh Damani breezed past ONGC's Sourav Kothari 7-1 in a best-of-13 frame final to win the CCI All India Open Snooker Championship on Sunday and prize money of Rs 12.25 lakh. While Damani went home richer by Rs. 2 lakhs, Kothari received Rs. 1.30 lakh for finishing runners-up.
Kothari had a bad day in the office, which saw Damani hardly sweating it out. He had smelt it early and stuck to his safe game with occasional bold attempts at long and difficult shots that he succeeded. Kothari, on the other hand, though leading 48-25 initially with some small efforts of 19 and 21, missed a simple last red in the centre pocket to hand the ball in Damaniās court in the first frame.
Damani was in no mood to let this chance slip through as he potted the final red and followed it up with the brown before taking the balls from the table to garner a crucial run of 35 to win the first frame.Ā
"It's great to win. I am not surprised to have won so comfortably, sometimes it happens that your opponent has a bad day. Sourav is a formidable opponent, who has great qualities, but I decided to stick to my game and I think it was my consistent performance which helped me come through," said Damani, reported PTI.
The second frame saw Damani exhibiting good confidence in efforts of 33 and 53 as he closed out to take a 2-0 lead. After winning the first two frames, the third one saw Kothari under extreme pressure whose attempt to play safe saw him missing some sitters. He gave away many penalty points that Damani capitalized on to take the lead 3-0.Ā Ā
The fourth, however, saw Kothari showing a comeback as Damani trailed initially, but he managed to win the frame on the black to stretch his lead. The lob-sided game saw the outcome already been decided and it was just a matter of time before the match was wrapped up. After Damani won the fifth frame, Kothari finally got his first win of the day as he managed a break of 43 in the sixth frame just before the break.
But, it could only delay theĀ inevitable as Damani came back to win two consecutive frames to seal the match, winning at (57(break 35)-48, 86(33, 53)-6, 57-8, 55-51, 65-54, 5-79(43), 75-20, 72-2). The losing semi-finalists, Kamal Chawla and Aditya Mehta, both took home a purse of Rs 75,000 each.
