It will be an all-Petroleum Sports Promotion Board affair when Devendra Joshi, the only renowned name left in fray, clashes with Dhruv Sitwala for the title in the LIC-BSNL National Billiards Championship in Chennai later on Friday.
In the semi-finals, Maharashtra's Joshi, potting with elan, displayed silken touch to wallop Rupesh Shah of Gujarat 1498-832, while promising Dhruv halted the winning streak of giant-killer Mohd. Asim of Railways, who had vanquished reigning champion Pankaj Advani in the last 16 stage.
Dhruv won 1246-752 to enter the national final for the first time.
The seasoned star from Maharashtra, who had survived a scare from Prem Prakash (Tamil Nadu) in the pre-quarter-finals before getting past Ashok Shandilya in the quarters, played with aplomb to fell Rupesh with a barrage of breaks.
Joshi proved that he still has champion stuff left in him, coming up with scintillating top table play, punctuated with a 400-plus break, a double century and two century breaks.
He continued from where he left yesterday to pound his hapless rival with ease.
Almost right through the four-hour time format contest, it was Joshi who called the shots and reduced Rupesh to a mere spectator.
He warmed up with a break of 270 in the seventh visit and followed it up with a 405 in the next. A 151 in the ninth visit helped him to surge ahead 838-39.
Rupesh tried to make amends with a break of 154 in the tenth, but Joshi's experience proved too hot to handle for Rupesh, coming from the land of his idol Geet Sethi.
Joshi, on the other hand, compiled mini-breaks to enlarge the lead before adding a 114 break in the 37th visit to win by a big margin.
Rupesh missed some easy in-offs and his effort of 105 in the 24th visit hardly altered the outcome.
In the other semi-final, Sitwala defeated Asim without much ado. A break of 163 in the 11th gave Dhruv the initial lead, which he substantiated with a 110 in the 29th before capping it with a fine break of 204 in the 66th visit.
The Bengal-based Asim, struggled to put together a big break, except a rather belated effort of 103 on his 61st visit.
