Snooker: Rakesh Roshan Pradhan Crowned Green Baize Classic Champion

Bhubaneswar: Rakesh Roshan Pradhan emerged champion in the Green Baize Classic All Odisha Open Snooker Tournament, which concluded at the Vintage Club in Bhubaneswar on Saturday evening.

He beat Aakash Mohapatra in the final by 6-3 frames to take the top prize of Rs 15,000.

This was the fifth State level open snooker title for local cueist Pradhan and he clinched it after a gap of six years. Runner-up Mohapatra, from Cuttack, received the runner-up prize of Rs 8,000. Losing semifinalists Siddharth Sen and Nishant Biswal pocketed Rs 4,000 each, while losing quarterfinalists Subrat Das, Ashit Choudhury, Chirag Arora and Kunal Agrawal were given Rs 2,000 each.

Dominating the final match from the word go, Mohapatra raced to a 2-0 lead with a break of 60, which was the highest in the tournament. But displaying superb potting skills, Pradhan, a medico by profession, fought back in style to win four frames in a row (4-2).

Though Mohapatra managed to win the seventh frame and reduced the margin to 4-3, it was too late for him as Pradhan captured the next two frames to clinch victory with the final scored reading 24-65, 25-75, 67-34, 63-30, 48-7, 77-13, 22-66, 57-48, 61-51 in his favour.

The closing ceremony took place in the presence of the Billiards & Snooker Association of Odisha (BSAO) secretary Sameer Ali, tournament director Govind Sharma and Vintage Club co-owners Amiya Ranjan Nayak and Satyadip Das.

BSAO president Tara Ranjan Pattnaik congratulated the champion and thanked all the participants for their performances and the organizers for the successful staging of the tournament.