Alok Kumar, Rafath Habib advance in National Masters Snooker

CHENNAI: Fancied players including Alok Kumar of Petroleum Sports Promotion Board and Rafath Habib of Railways entered the pre-quarterfinals of the 1st National Masters Snooker championship on Friday.Kumar, a former national champion, registered wins over Rajesh Tulsian (3-0) and Nadeem Aziz (3-1) to book a spot in the knockout stage. Habib, a former Asian Games gold medalist, outplayed S K N Rajmohan 3-0 and overcame the challenge of Tamil Nadu's Siddharth Rao 3-2 to make sure of advancing.Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu's Nadeem Ahmed, S A Saleem, Prem Prakash and Siddharth Rao also entered the knockout round. West Bengal's Rajesh Tulsian and Shyam Jagtiani, a former national champion, moved ahead.Round-robin results (All TN unless otherwise specified): Rafath Habib bt S K N Rajmohan 3-0, Rajmohan bt E Sivakumar 3-0, Prem Prakash bt Ramesh 3-1,D Bhuvaneswaran bt K Natarajan 3-0, S A Saleem bt Easwaramurthy 3-0, Rajesh Tulsian (WB) bt Nadeem Aziz (Kar) 3-0, Siddharth Rao bt V Anand (Kar) 3-2, Nadeem Ahmed bt H Venkatesh 3-1.Chirag Ramakrishnan (Mah) bt M C Manoj 3-1, Sharat Kumar (Del) bt Ramesh 3-1, Thirumurugan bt S H Kamaraj 3-2, R Saravanan bt L Nagaraj (Kar) 3-2, N Srinivas bt S Surendran 3-2, Subramaniam (Mah) bt Joy Mehra (Punjab) 3-0, H Venkatesh w/o R S Krishnan.R Saravanan bt M Baskaran 3-0, Sajiv Mathews bt Nelson 3-0, Manu Dev (Kar) bt N Srinivas 3-0, Saleem bt Subramaniam 3-1, P Vijaykumar bt Bharath 3-0, Shyam Jagtiani (WB) bt Chirag Ramakrishnan 3-0, Alok Kumar (PSPB) bt Rajesh Tulsian (WB) 3-0, Nadeem Ahmed bt K Natarajan 3-0, Rafath Habib bt Siddharth Rao 3-2, Rafath Habib bt V Anand (Kar) 3-0.Prem Prakash bt Dhruv Agarwal 3-0, Shyam Jagtiani (WB) bt M C Manoj 3-1, Alok Kumar bt Nadeem Aziz 3-1, Nadeem Ahmed bt D Bhuvaneswaran 3-0, L Nagaraj (Kar) bt Thirumurugan 3-2.