Tamil Nadu hopes rest on Shrikrishna

The 17-year-old, who plays billiards and snooker, with equal felicity recently won all the National Junior and Sub-Junior titles on offer in Bengaluru to set a record for Tamil Nadu. The only player from Tamil Nadu to have won a senior national title is Siddharth Rao but Shrikrishna is seen as the next big player from the state.

Shrikrishna said he liked playing 6 Red snooker thugh he did not enjoy a good run last year. “I entered the round of 32 last year,” said the TN talent. “It is a very challenging format, more like the T20. One mistake and you will open up the position for a table clearance,” added the Chennai boy, who has recorded a few maximum breaks (75) in 6-Red snooker.

From the qualifying rounds, 48 players will join the top 16 players from last year in the league stage. From Tamil Nadu  Parthiba Rajendran, S Surendran, Uday Kumar, S A Saleem, K Rakesh, Kaavya Bharath, Siddharth Rao, G Prabhu, Vijay Nichani, Prem Prakash, Vadivel, Pranit R and R Loganathan will play in the qualifying rounds. 

Other prominent players like Dilip Kumar (RSPB), Girish (RSPB), Lucky Vatnani (Telangana), Dhwaj Haria (PSPB), I V Rajeev(AP) and Daksh Reddy (Karnataka) will also be seen in action on Saturday.

The inauguration is at 8 a.m, after which the matches will start from 9 30 am on all the 10 playing tables.