Aashit Pandya of Mumbai showed good fighting spirit to script a hard-fought 4-3 win against Pune cueist Nimish Kulkarni in a best-of-7-frame first round match of the 4th Indian Open snooker qualifying tournament at the Cricket Club of India here today.
Pandya took time to get into his groove and lost the opening two frames. But thereafter he found his touch and in splendid fashion fought back by winning the next three frames on the trot to take the lead.
However, in the sixth Kulkarni once again potted steadily to win the frame and level scores, taking the match to the decider before Pandya won a close seventh frame for a 52-56, 27-63, 65-23, 72-39, 81-39, 34-73, 52-29 victory.
Anas Ali of Surat dropped the opening frame against Rohit Rohit Pandloskar of Mumbai before coming back with a strong performance to score a deserving 4-1 (71-73, 64-19, 58-27, 67-2, 69-22) triumph.
In other first round encounters, Gaurav Jaisinghani of Mumbai and Aditya Deshpande of Pune won their respective matches by comfortable 4-0 margins.
Jaisinghani was on a roll as he tamed Parag Paithankar coasting to a 49-7, 56-28, 44-29, 64-52 win and Deshpande sidelined Mustafa Khozem winning at 61-18, 71-30, 74-19, 72-14.
Other results (1st round): Dhairya Bhandari beat Shyam Kotak 4-2 (59-23, 69-31, 44-45, 52-68, 55-14, 46-13); Mayank Bhavsar beat Harish Pahuja 4-2 (56-32, 24-69, 56-26, 76-44, 54-62, 50-12); Aditya Deshpande beat Mustafa Khozem 4-0 (61-18, 71-30, 74-19, 72-14); Kekoo Nicholson beat Avinash Gaikwad 4-1 (53-45, 65-19, 65-30, 34-49, 48-16); Mukund Bharadia beat Varun Daga 4-1 (58-47, 22-65, 74-32, 93-60, 57-7).
