Mohali, March 12
The fourth day of the Chaudhary Vishnu Pal Singh Memorial All-India Open 9-Ball Pool Tournament saw a major upset as unknown Rajat Khaneja defeated current national snooker champion Alok Kumar 7-6 in a well- contested match in the knock-out round. The tournament is being played at Mohali Club, Phase 7 here.

In another interesting match, number two local player Sumit Talwar got the better of Rafath Habib, another top player, 7-6.

The quarterfinals, semifinals and final matches will be held tomorrow.

Other results:

Knock out round:

Sandeep Duggal b Amit Yadav (7-2); Sumer Chandi b Shaleen Anand (7-1); Sundeep Gulati b Vicky (7-1); Sumit Talwar b Rafath Habib (7-6); Harpreet Grover b Aneesh (7-1); Sameer Bhalla b Dhruv Verma (7-5); Tarun Kumar b Manoj Tyagi (7-3); Anandit Joshi b Amardeep Bhatia (7-5); Amar Beni Pal b Divya Sharma (7-4); Amit Verma b Ashu Duggal (7-1); Kamal Chawla b Mandeep Makkar (7-3); Siddhart Anand b Manav Dhawan (7-4); Rajat Khaneja b Manmeet Bhatia (7-5); Alok Kumar b Varun Raheja (7-2).

Chandigarh, March 12
With top lady golfers turning pro, the field is wide open for this year’s 15th Chandigarh Ladies Amateur Golf Championship, which begins on the lush course of the Chandigarh Golf Club on Tuesday.

The three-day stroke play event will be followed by a mixed doubles competition on the fourth day.

The “open” tag is missing from the tournament this year.

Competition will be restricted to Chandigarh ladies only, said lady captain Pauline J.M. Singh.

With Irina, Parneeta, Preetinder and Minna Johl turning pro and amateur Sonia Sharma playing in a pro event, the main contenders for the open title will be Mani Chander, Dimple Minocha and Sonali Chhibber.

Competitions will be held in junior (under 18), seniors (above 50) and super seniors (above 65) categories besides the open event.

The senior and super senior challenge will be spearheaded by Binny Bath, Harvinder Sandhu, Dalbir Sahi and Gurbinder Johl.

Thirty participants attended a rules clinic on the do’s and don’ts of golf this evening.

Chandigarh, March 12
The first national Twenty20 cricket championship will be held next month here.

This was decided in the meeting of the executive committee of the Chandigarh Twenty-20 Cricket Association (CTTCA), which met here on Sunday under the chairmanship of CTTCA president I. D. Kamboj.

The venues of the matches will be the Sector 16 cricket stadium and the Sector 3 cricket stadium in Panchkula.

“As many as 12 top teams of the country will participate in the tournament, which will be played on a league-cum-knock-out basis,” Kamboj said.

Apart from local teams like ICL XI and Minerva Cricket Academy, the other teams including Canara Bank of Bangalore, All India Associate Banks, Indian Oil Corporation, World Cricket Academy of Mumbai, LIC Cricket Club, Dell XI, Bishnoi Cricket Club, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, and Air India, will be part of the championship.

Star cricketers, including Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Munaf Patel, Wasim Jaffer, Gautam Gambhir, Joginder Sharma, Mohammed Kaif, R. P. Singh and Zaheer Khan are also likely to play here.

The winner will get Rs 1 lakh while the runner up will pocket Rs 51,000. Besides, other lucrative individual awards will be given.

Chandigarh, March 12
The local D. P. Azad Cricket Academy, set up last year, will start fresh admission of budding cricketers from March 14.

“Only 20 cricketers in the age group of 8 to 10, 10 to 13 and 13 to 15 will be admitted in the academy on a first-come-first basis”, said D. P. Azad, the chairman of the academy.

“Besides local youngsters, three overseas players (two from USA and one from Bangkok), also got training here under national level coaches like Tej Kaul, Manjit Singh, Bharti Vij and Monish Bali. This year, too, we expect a large number of trainees," added Azad. — TNS

Mohali, March 12
Superb batting by Tej Gobind (65 runs off 36 balls, 3X6, 4X4) enabled Godrej Cricket Club to beat Numero UNO-XI by 62 runs in the 4th Bharat Kehso Gupta Memorial League cricket tournament. The tournament was held at the PCA Stadium, here yesterday.

Brief scores:

Godrej CC: 187 for 5 in 25 overs.

Tej Gobind 65, Vaneet Chawla 36, Charanjeet 38, Sanjay Bhatia 28

Naveen Puri 2 for 31, Manu 2 for 35

Numero XI: 125 all out

Sunil Sharma 39, Naveen 21,

Vijay Pal 2 for 23, Amritpal 2 for 28

In another match, the Airtel team beat Sigma by 51 runs. Airtel made 157 runs for 8 wickets in 25 overs while the Sigma team was bundled out for 106 runs in 19.3 overs.

In the last match, which was truncated into 15 overs due to overnight rains, the Deep Engineering Works team routed United Steels by 31 runs. Deep Engineering Works made 117 runs for 9 wickets in 15 overs while the United team could muster only 86 runs for 5 wickets in 15 overs.

Chandigarh, March 12
The Chandigarh administration has identified 174 posts for immediate filling to maintain essential healthcare services in the city.

The posts have been identified in Government Medical College and Hospital, Sector 32.

The proposal has been submitted to the Centre, seeking filling of these posts on contract in order to ensure continuation of essential work.