70th National Billiards Championship from April 19

Kumara Lanerolle, Secretary of the BSASL is seen receiving the sponsorship package from P.H. Liyanage, Sectional President AAC flanked by D. Hettiarachchi, Secretary AAC, Anton Kandiah, Treasurer AAC and Niranjan Abeyratne, Tournament Secretary, BSASL 
Pic by Pradeep Dilrukshana

By M. Shamil Amit

The cue players will be back in action as the Billiards and Snooker Association of Sri Lanka (BSASL) have finalised arrangements to conduct the National Billiards Championship from April 19 to May 11.

The 70th National Billiards Championship is being sponsored by the Automobile Association of Ceylon (AAC) for the second successive year.

Before the Nationals, the BSASL will be conducting two qualifying tournaments with the first being the district tournaments which will be conducted in Colombo, Galle, Kandy, Kegalle and Nuwara Eliya.

After the completion of the district tournaments the second qualifying tournament which is the All Island Lanka Plate Championship is slotted to be played in Colombo.  The players contesting in the All Island Lanka Plate will be clashing for the16 slots to contest along with the 16 national ranked players at the 70th National Billiards Championship.

The round robin matches of the Colombo district tournament will be played at the BSASL headquarters billiards table in Torrington and from the pre-quarter finals onwards the matches will be played at the Automobile Association Club in Colombo.

The tournaments, including the national championship will be played in the time format. The round robin matches of the district tournaments will be played over one hour duration and the knockouts will be played over one and a half hours while the national championship final is scheduled to be played over two hours at the AAC billiards table. Last year Irshad Thaha of Moors SC emerged the national champion defeating Susantha Wickrama of Army in the final. Thaha won the title for the third successive year and will be aiming to retain the title.