Teenage sensation Ishpreet Singh Chadha stunned defending champion Varun Madan in the knockouts to step into the last eight, but then lost in the quarter-finals of the National 6-Red Snooker Championship at the Bengal Rowing Club here on Monday.
Unlike in other matches, Ishpreet didn't have an easier time as Varun, winner of the previous edition, gave tough competition to his younger counterpart. The first frame went to Ishpreet with the score reading 57-15.
Thereafter, Varun pocketed the next two frames 60-6, 39-11 but Ishpreet came back strongly to pocket the fourth and the fifth frames 44-10, 29-21.
Down by 2-3, Varun made a strong comeback and won the sixth frame 70-0 but he broke under pressure as he lost the final two frames 10-49, 1-51. However, later in the day, Chadha lost to Kamal Chawla of Railway Sports Promotion Board (RSPB) 5-1 in the quarter-finals.
Meanwhile, Sourav Kothari, Aditya Mehta and Brijesh Damani won their respective matches against Manish Jain, Anurag Giri and Shahbaaz Adil Khan to advance into the quarters along with Manan Chandra, Chawla, Pushpinder Singh and Rajat Khaneja.
