Kothari, Bhaskar top selection camp for World Billiards bash

Reigning Asian Billiards champion Sourav Kothari and 1998 Asian Games bronze medallist Balachandra Bhaskar have topped the selection camp here today for the World Billiards Championship in Leeds, starting October 20.
Bhaskar and Kothari have emerged as the No.1 and 2, respectively to represent the country in the Leeds event, the Billiards and Snooker Federation of India (BSFI) release stated.
While Alok Kumar, Brijesh Damani and Malkeet Singh did not participate in the camp, Bhaskar, Kothari, Dhruv Sitwala, Rupesh Shah and Jaiveer Dhingra fought it out in two separate camps ('Y' and 'Z') for the coveted slots.
Top Indian cueists -- Geet Sethi, Pankaj Advani and Ashok Shandilya -- are entitled to get an automatic qualification by the International Billiards and Snooker Federation if they wish to compete, as they all have one or more IBSF world titles under their belt.

India's poster boy of cue sports, 29-year-old Advani, who has a record 10 world titles to his credit, achieved a "grand double" by winning both the time and point formats at the IBSF World Billiards Championships in 2005.
Sethi, who dominated English billiards in the 1990s, was the World Professional Billiards champion in 1992, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2006. Mumbai cueist Shandilya was the IBSF World Billiards Short Format Champion.