Shrikrishna retains sub-junior billiards title

Shrikrishna reserved his best for the final and recorded the highest break in this tournament (255) in the final. “This being my last year in sub-junior, I am very happy and excited to retain the title and win it for the fourth consecutive year,” said a delighted Shrikrishna at the end of the match. 

Shrikrishna’s bad opening stroke with white gave Kreish an opportuninty to make points and he missed capitalizing on the same by missing a red pot at 7. 

The Chennai boy created a difficult cannon and set top table in the third minute and went out of position at 81 leaving the score at 83-7. 

Subsequently, Shrikrishna tried a thin in-off and fouled. Kreish got the scoreboard ticking to take it to 74-93 in the 16th minute. Shri came up with a break of 41 missed a big one to lead 134-110.

Finding that Kreish was catching up and choosing to pin his down, Shri switched to postman’s knock at the top table. At 149 break, he went out of position and recovered with a superb red off to come into drop cannon. Then he missed a red pot that was close to a break of 255, the tournament’s highest with about 20 minutes to go. The 255-break took 18 minutes. 

Shrikrishna closed out the match with a break of 113. 

Earlier, in the semi-final, Shrikrishna overcame Rayaan Razmi 372-185 with breaks of 52 and 168. Razmi made a good break of 41 in the 28th minute in the 3 one-hour format bridging the score to 170-100. What looked like a tight match at that stage, was tilted by Shrikrishna in his favour with a big 168 break taking the score to 348-132.

In the morning, Shrikrishna’s opponent was 12-year-old natural striker Shayaan Razmi, a promising talent from Maharashtra with tremendous support from his parents. Shrikrishna compiled breaks of 52, 123 and 102 on the way to his 527-99 win over Shayaan. 

Shrikrishna got off to a flying start in sub-junior snooker too when he beat Himanshu Kotyal 2-0 in his first match.