CHENNAI: An assiduous display enabled Vidya Pillai defend her national snooker title — her sixth overall — withstanding a dour opponent in Arantxa Sanchis. But for a few tentative moments, she was in absolute control of her game, summoning her varied skills and experience, prevailing over Sanchis 53- 34, 43-53, 92-15 and 54-15 in the TNBSA-National Snooker and Billiards Championship here on Monday.

After seizing the opening frame devoid of fuss, Pillai sequestered to her shell in the second, lending Sanchis a peep into the game. Sanchis responded stoically, potting with precision and extricating herself of tricky cue-ball scenarios, which Pillai had hatched. She led comfortably at 44-12, before Pillai upped the ante. Breaks of 13 and 18 spiraled Pillai to 43 points, three behind Sanchis. But she fumbled the remaining black, and Sanchis duly converted to sneak through.

But thereafter Sanchis’s game tapered off, the overly defensive strategies she deployed backfired, and an aggressive Pillai sped forth to take the frame with conviction.

Pillai, perhaps amplified by her jagged eyes, fired in a 44-point break and led Sanchis comfortably at 68-0. The game was beyond Sanchis’s ambit, she signaled a mini resurrection with a 15-point break, but woefully interrupted by a jittery shot. Pillai, her finesse to the prominence, promptly gobbled up the frame 92-15.

Sanchis tried to wore down Pillai in the fourth, straightaway stationing the cue ball in tricky spots. But experienced as Pillai is, she bailed herself of those, and in fact reversed the scenario, inducing fouls from Sanchis (twice in the frame). Her poise gradually slipped, and so did her game. The frame, though, crept along at snail’s pace, with both contend in accumulating than enforcing. Pillai broke the tedium with a 16-point break, taking her lead to 22 points. Meanwhile, Sanchis’ shots rarely fetched the intended target, and her defensive ruse fell apart at the experience of a serene counterpart. Another 16- point spree — in which she polished off the yellow, green, and blue — secured silverware for the country’s most celebrated woman cueist.

Earlier, Neena Praveen edged Suniti Dhamani 53-31, 26-17 to emerge third.

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