Pankaj Advani defeats Sourav Kothari to win Asian Billiards Championship

Pankaj Advani on 14 April 2017 defeated Sourav Kothari 6-3 to win the Asian Billiards Championship final held in Chandigarh.

It is Advani’s seventh Asian title.

About Pankaj Advani

• Born on 24 July 1985, Pankaj Arjan Advani is an Indian professional player of English billiards and former professional snooker player.

• He has achieved a hat-trick of hat-tricks in English billiards, holding the World, Asian, and Indian National Championship titles simultaneously, in three different years: 2005, 2008 and 2012.

• In 2012, he became a snooker professional.

• He won the 2014 IBSF World 6-Red Snooker Championship, on his debut in that discipline.

• He is the only player ever to win world titles in both the long and short formats of snooker (15-red standard, and 6-red) and both formats of English billiards (time and point).

• He is India's first world champion in 6-red snooker.

• On 14 August 2014, he helped win the first ever World Team Billiards Championship held in Glasgow, Scotland, along with Rupesh Shan, Devendra Joshi and Ashok Shandilya.

• In 2004, he was honoured with the Arjuna Award. In 2006, he was awarded with the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna. In 2009, he was bestowed with the Padma Shri.