Pune: Irshad Ahmed maintaining his giant-killing run in the VIII International Carrom Federation Cup defeated the reigning world champion Prashant More 3-25, 25-14 and 25-24 in a pulsating final to claim the men’s singles crown. Irshad with just a lone runner-up place in the nationals to show, had in earlier rounds eliminated former world champion Sri Lankan Nishantha Fernando followed by a facile win over National champion and international Zaheer Pasha. In fact Zaheer was in fine form having scored six white slams in the ‘Swiss League’ followed by a couple in the individual and team events. S Apoorva the current world champion beat rank outsider Ayesha Sajid 10-25, 25-22 and 25-6 from a hopeless situation. .
The victories served as a fitting finale to the five day tournament which was conducted at the PYC Gymkhana. With all the four semi-finalists in both the sections from India it was a clean sweep for the super power in carrom.
The third places went to Rajesh Gohil and Rashmi Kumari who defeated Zaheer Pasha at 25-0, 10-25 and 25-15 and K Nagajyothi 25-13, 25-16 respectively.
