Sitwala beats Pathak, meets Manan

MUMBAI: Dhruv Sitwala entered the lasteight of the 3rd National Three Cushion Carombole Championship at the DDAcomplex in Delhi on Monday beating Delhi's Vivek Pathak 9-3. He now takes onManan Chandra who beat Sunny Solanki 20-8. Dharmender Lilly and AlokKumar had identical 14-6 wins over Divya Sharma and Akshay. Rupesh Shah andSumit Talwar gave walk-overs.How tough the game is can be judgedfrom the fact that neither player scored after 13 visits. India cue great ShyamShroff once went to the US to try his hand at carom but came back mortified,just not able to make any headway.Said Sitwala, "I played Carom twoyears ago losing to Kamal Chawla at the Nationals. The cue is different, theball is one-and-a- half times bigger, the table is bigger than the pool tableand the throw of the cushions is different with the angle beingunpredictable."Said Pathak, who runs the website cuesportsindia.com,about Carom, "The conditions could be better. There is just one table at theNationals. There are just two others in the entire country. The throw is thetable is such that at best four-cushion canons are possible. Abroad the run ofthe tables is such that eight cushion canons can be played."So whatare the breaks like? Pathak says, "The maximum has been 3. Manan and Lilly canmake about 6-7. The world record is 18 or thereabouts. In one-cushion Carom thebreak is about 22-24. Our players can into double figures inthat."