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Sethi on cue for another title shot

Former two-time champion Geet Sethi of India, leading the challenge of 20 compatriots, should be making his last hurrah on his home tables when the curtain on the World Professional Billiards Championships goes up in a new luxury hotel in the textile city of Ahmedabad on Friday.

Sethi told the media that after losing his title in 1995, he felt like quitting the game for good. "There was nothing to motivate me, and I found it difficult to bend at the table day in and day out, hence the thought of quitting crossed my mind very seriously," the former Tatas officer, now a businessman in his own right, said, sparing time from the demands of his dual role as both organiser and player.

What brought him back, apparently, was the news that billiards and its offshoots like snooker were included in the Bangkok Asian Games for the first time.

Now he is back in intense practise, and has just returned from the Walter Lindrum Invitation Tournament in Australia where he lost to Jimmy White in the semi-finals.

He and quite a few others have been attending the Indian camp under the watchful eye of former amateur champion Michael Ferreira, and this has given him hopes of snatching the title back.

But it is not not going to be easy. Reigning champion Mike Russell, whom he is seeded to meet in the finals, is in awesome touch. In a practice session, the Central England player chalked up 483 in a jiffy till a camera flash disturbed him.

Sethi is 12 ranking points away from Russell, who has won two titles out of the three he has played this season in England.

Russell regularly knocks up 500 in practice, but said it was no indicator of actual match play where the rival is breathing down his neck. He felt that any of the top eight were capable of bethroning him. He feared Chris Shutt more than Peter Gilchrist, the current world number three, he said.

The rest of the field, however, believes that Russell, who married an Indian girl on his first visit here, is still favourite to win the title and the first prize of 10,400 pounds.

That assessment, however, fails to take into acount the silent Australian, Robbie Foldvari, who won the amateur world title in Sydney last month. Even in the professional circuit, Foldvari regularly makes the semifinal grades.

Roxton Chapman, another cueist from the English stable, is also a gifted player with some good wins on his score sheet.

The eight directly seeded to play in the third round are holder Russell, Sethi, Chapman, Gilchrist, David Causier, Devendra Joshi, Foldvari and Ashok Shandilya.

Day one will see two Indians make their debut in the event -- Ishtmit Malik and Ashan ul Haque. They play the first two matches of the first round, which will be of only one session of two hours.

From the second round on till the finals, it will be two sessions of two hours each.

The two debutants are followed by five other matches featuring only Indians. The only exception is the match in which D Sitwala is pitted against Briton Peter Sheehan. The other Indians scheduled for day one action are Aman Agrawal vs Dinkar Akolkar, Satish Amarnath vs Rupesh Shah, Manoj Kothari vs Aditya Goenka, Chandresh Shah vs Arvind Savur.

The tougher games begin when winners of first round games face the likes of Nalin Patel, Shutt, Ferreira, Ian Williamson, Alok Kumar, Subhash Agrawal, Bob Close the oldest player in the tournament and Eugene Hughes, the first Irishman to play here.

The winners of this round then take on the seeded players in the third round, followed by the quarter-finals. The final of this 40,000 pound tournament is on September 30. UNI