Devendra Joshi of Petroleum Sports Promotion Board fashioned a facile victory in his second round-robin tie to book a berth in the knock-out round, on a day of close encounters in the BPCL- ONGC National 9-Ball Pool Championship at the Bombay Presidency Golf Club, in Mumbai, on Tuesday.
Joshi crushed a hapless N.N. Rakesh of Chandigarh 5-0 in Group 'J' for his second straight win.
Rishabh Thakker of Maharashtra was shocked 3-5 by state mate V. Subramaniam in Group 'X', but the defeat did not deny him a place in the knock-out.
Thakker, who just recovered from leptospirosis, won his first two matches and sealed a place in the next round.
Likewise, Saurav Kothari also made it to the knock-out after receiving a walk-over in his third and concluding match in Group 'Q'.
Kothari, who had a win and a loss, needed a second victory to qualify.
Results:
Group 'D': Puneet Kasat (Mah) bt Azad Khan (UP) 5-3; K. Ranjan (TN) bt Monu Chaudhary (Del) 5-4.
Group 'E': Punit Kaushik (Del) bt Sandeep Yadav (MP) 5-1.
Group 'F': Rishabh Thukkral (Del) bt Manoj Verma (Bih) 5-1.
Group 'G': Siddharth Anand (Del) bt Ajay Bhushan (Ch) 5-4.
Group 'H': Amit Khansaheb (Del) bt L. Nagaraj (KSBA) 5-2; Puneet (Mah) bt Bharat Vissanji (Mah) 5-0.
Group 'I': Geet Sethi (Guj) bt Shyamal Sharma (Bih) 5-4.
Group 'J': Devendra Joshi (PSPB) bt N.N. Rakesh (Ch) 5-0.
Group 'K': Vinayak Agarwal (UP) bt Mohit Agarwal (Del) 5-1.
Group 'L': Mohd. Asim (Rlys) bt V. Sood (Del) 5-1.
Group 'M': Manmeet Bhatia (Del) bt Cyrus Kayani (Mah) 5-1; Amit Sapru (Mah) bt Sumeet Talwar (Ch) 5-4.
Group 'N': Harsh Thakker (Mah) bt Pavitra Barkatiya (MP) 5-2.
Group 'O': Navpreet Singh (Del) bt Divya Sharma (Pun) 5-4.
Group 'P': Chirag Ramakrishnan (Mah) bt P. Patel (Guj) 5-3.
Group 'Q': Bheem Singh (Del) bt Amar Habib (Mah) 5-3.
Group 'S': Sarang Shroff (Mah) bt Praneet J (TN) 5-2.
Group 'T': Siddharth Parekh (Mah) bt Jai Ganesh (Rlys) 5-2; Rakesh Vyas (Mah) bt Sanjay Shah (Guj) 5-4.
Group 'U': Ashish Thakker (Mah) bt Sameer (Har) 5-3; Kedar Kotkar (Mah) bt Alpesh Waghela (Guj) 5-2; Kedar Kotkar bt Dilip Kamat (Mah) 5-2.
Group 'V': Omar Balsara (Mah) bt Kartik Murugesan (TN) 5-1.
Group 'W': Gunjan Patel (Guj) bt Chandu Shah (Mah) 5-0.
Group 'X': V. Subramaniam (Mah) bt Rishabh Thakker (Mah) 5-3.