26-Apr-2009 176
Jeet Kishore Das returned to competitive cuesports in style by winning the title in the first CSA All-Orissa Open Snooker Tournament, which concluded at Cue Sport Academy in Bhubaneswar today.
In the best-of-nine-frame final, unseeded Jeet beat third seed Subrat Das by 5-3 frames to pocket the top prize of Rs 20,000. He raced to a 3-0 lead by taking the first three frames 65-59, 79-66, 61-58.
Das made a comeback by winning the next two frames 73-27, 65-31. The next two frames were shared by the contestants with Jeet bagging the sixth 62-58 and Subrat grabbing the seventh 54-28.
The more enterprising Jeet eventually clinched the match by winning the eighth frame 60-39. It was a memorable win for the Cuttack software engineer Jeet, who was making a comeback to cuesports after a gap of seven years.
He proved to be a giant killer by upsetting the applecart of several seeded players including top seed Siddharth Sen, fourth seed Ahsan-ul Haque and seventh seed Sureet Singh.
``My game plan was to win the first three frames and then play safe. Things went according to my plan even if my opponent put up a good fight,’’ said Jeet after the final match.
Runner-up Subrat took home Rs 10,000, while losing semifinalists Ahsan-ul Haque and Rakesh Roshan Pradhan received Rs 5,000 each.
The four losing quarterfinalists Sureet Singh, Khalid Sultan, Devbrat Rout and Nishant Biswal were given Rs 2,500 each. A special prize of Rs 2,000 for making the highest break of 57 went to Ahsan-ul Haque.
Host Cue Sport Academy president Premanshu Sekhar Pattnayak and former Staten volleyball captain P C Patnaik gave away the prizes at the closing function.
