Bennett students show off their snooker skills

Bennett University’s Sports Committee organised a four-day snooker tournament ranging from both girls and boys’ singles matches to mixed doubles including boys’ double matches, girls’ and boys’ mixed doubles and boys-only doubles only, final of which was on 16 October.

Initially, 16 teams cleared the selection rounds who faced each other in group stages. Group stages further knocked out eight teams who didn’t make it to the knockout.

Prateek Rai, School of Engineering and Aryan Bajaj, School of Management grabbed the first position while Saksham Vig, and Vashu Jindal, School of Engineering finished Runners-up

University’s Snooker Captain Karan Anand said, “We have too many competitions going on right now in the university. Sneaking the group stage matches was difficult but we have finally made it to this date. It was an amazing show that the players had put up.”

He added that this tournament also provides as a ground for talent hunting among freshmen would could be part of the university team and represent university in inter-university tournaments.

Aiming for the right shot

It is tough preparing for a snooker match as the opponent might have a trick or two up their sleeves. More than the physical work-out, the mental work-out takes toll on the player.

As explained by Mehal Srivastava, boys’ Singles Gold Medallist, it can take hours to come up with right shot.

Srivastava, who was playing in a team for boys’ doubles said, “Snooker is a perfect harmony of mental work and physical work. If I were to shoot at 70 degree angle, it would only be 70 degrees, anything more or less than that could increase chances of potting the cue ball and missing a round of chance to the opponent, thereby risk of losing the game increases.”

He also mentioned that every player have certain special skills that are their personal traits.

“What separates the winner from his opponent is the ability to hold his mind when everyone else is losing theirs. Every great snooker player like the English player Ronnie O’ Sullivan or the Indian player Pankaj Advani, they have their own skills which differ from their opponents and that sets them apart.”


Looking Forward To the Win


Dev Duhan and Nabeeq who qualified for the knock out stages mentioned that they had spent days together to understand each other before they enrolled for the tournament.

Duhan commented,” We spent days in understanding each other, his playing style is similar to mine yet we differ a lot. We have learnt a lot during the tournament and I am looking forward to advance from knock-outs.”

The table is well set for the teams to take on each other in the knock out stages. Furthermore, four teams would advance to semi-finals and out of those two finalists would be chosen as the university gears up for more of indoor tournaments.