Asian Games

Ashok Shandilya won the Asian Billiards Championship which was
held in Bangalore, India, from 18th-24th March 2002.
This was only the second running of the Billiards competition, with the
previous event having been held sixteen years ago in 1986. On that
occasion it was won by Geet Sethi and he was in the line-up again as
part of a strong Indian representation who had been brought together in
a special “training camp” in preparation for the event.

The week-long Championship, sponsored by Om Kotak Mahindra
Life Insurance, was played under the 100-up format and also included
representatives from Thailand, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Indonesia, and
Myanmar (formerly Burma). However, it was the Indians who dominated
the competition filling all four of the semi-final places. Both of these
matches produced unexpected results as Ashok Shandilya defeated
Geet Sethi in a contest which went to the deciding game, and wildcard
entry Pankaj Advani produced a confident display to beat India’s No.3
Devendra Joshi by four games to two.

Earlier in the competition Advani had registered his first ever win over
Shandilya when he produced a 3-2 result in the group stages, but in the
final he could not quite repeat that performance and was narrowly
defeated 4-3 by the Indian Champion.

Quarter-finals

Devendra Joshi (India) bt U Kyaw Oo (Myanmar) 4-1; Pankaj Advani (India) bt
Dhruv Sitwala (India) 4-1; Geet Sethi (India) bt Alok Kumar (India) 4-2; Ashok Shandilya (India)
bt Henry Boteju (Sri Lanka) 4-2.

Semi-finals

Pankaj Advani (India) bt Devendra Joshi (India) 4-2; Ashok Shandilya (India) bt Geet
Sethi (India) 4-3.

Final

Ashok Shandilya (India) bt Pankaj Advani (India) 5-4