Top seed Abhimanyu Gandhi survives a scare

AHMEDABAD: Defending champion Abhimanyu Gandhi survived a scare as he found his way out through the best-of-five third round of senior snooker in Gujarat State Ranking Billiards and Snooker Championship being held in Ahmedabad.
Being played at Ellisbridge Gymkhana, Abhimanyu was strolling on his way to the next round with a 2-0 lead against sub-junior snooker champion Karmesh Patel.
But Karmesh had other ideas and soon turned the tide when he put up a strong display to pocket the next two frames to level the scores 2-2, sending jitters to his opposition camp.
Rattled, Abhimanyu held on to his nerves as he brought all his experience to the fore to settle the issue by winning the thrilling decider.
However, in other matches, seasoned Tushar Sahay and Bhadresh Panchal faced little problem in beating Viraj Thakkar and Amit Soni with identical 3-0 margins. Tushar was in total control of the match all through hardly making mistakes. Bhadresh, a seasoned campaigner, too was in cruise control mode in his straight-frame win.
Naimesh Jadhav too faced had an easy ride against Junaid Dhada who he beat 3-1 comfortably.
Meanwhile, the second round of the tournament saw one of the biggest upsets as city’s top cueist Himanshu Dadlani was stunned by second seed Mohsin Achhava 1-2.
Apart from the shocker, the remaining second round matches saw easy wins as Malav Desai, Nakul Patel, Akil Rajani, Bhavin Sonaiya and Manan Atit registered comfortable 2-0 wins over Jaydeep Racch, Tushar Patel, Majid Sheikh, Amit Patel and Jayesh Patel respectively.