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Sethi survives a scare in World Snooker c`ship
Veteran cueist Geet Sethi survived a scare against Malta`s Simon Zammit, while Pankaj Advani had a field day against Moosa Saleem of Mauritius on the second day of the ONGC-World Snooker Championship here on Monday.
Hyderabad: Veteran cueist Geet Sethi
survived a scare against Malta`s Simon Zammit, while Pankaj
Advani had a field day against Moosa Saleem of Mauritius on
the second day of the ONGC-World Snooker Championship here
on Monday.
Sethi, who committed number of unforced errors during the
game, brought in all his experience on the table to edge past
Zammit 3-2 in the decider.
Sethi started the match nervously and lost first frame to
Zammit in no big time. He regained his confidence in the
second and struck the balls with sheer excellence to compile a
nice break of 69 to level the proceeding.
The third frame was quite scrappy as both the players
kept on committing unforced errors. However, at the end Sethi
held on to his nerves to surge ahead by 2-1.
In the fourth frame, Zammit showed some gutsy potting and
piled up a substantial lead over his opponent, leaving him
with no chance to make a comeback.
The decider saw Sethi taking a substantial lead and as he
was about to close the proceedings with two reds on the table,
a missed regulation red pot by him in an attempt to position
for the pink ball allowed Zammit to bounce back into the game.
Zammit cleverly took the two remaining reds with colours
and made the game open in the colour balls. Sethi needing only
one colour ball made a number of mistakes, but eventually lady
luck smiled on him as an attempted blue at the centre pocket
hit the jaw and rolled down along the cushion to the bottom
pocket, which sealed the match in his favour.
Reigning world champion and Asian games bronze medallist
Advani with his mellifluous cueing and gossamer touch
enthralled the crowd at the Hyderabad International Convention
Centre and completely outclassed his Mauritian opponent.
Advani ended the title hopes of Saleem 4-0 (84-00,
85(54)-22, 75(58)-21, 78(62)-39 in the men`s section.
Two times Asian Snooker Champion Yasin Merchant blazed
the green baize with breaks of 82, 89 and 71 in the first,
fifth and sixth frame respectively to win a hard fought battle
against Mario Fernandez of Ireland after being down by 1-3.
Amongst the other Indians, K Ranjan beat his fellow
countrymen Prabhakaran 3-1. Venkatesham and Kamaraj also came
out with flying colours against Frank Schoder (Germany) and
Andrey Will (Russia) respectively.
However, BVS Murthy was not that lucky as his teammates
and lost 0-3 to last year`s champion Dene O`kene of New
Zealand.
In the Ladies` category, Vidya Pillai and Anuja Chandra
registered a comfortable win over Claudia Webber (Switzerland)
and Bi Zhuqing (China) respectively.
Pillai defeated Webber 3-0, while Chandra crushed the
challenge of Zhuqing with an identical scoreline.
The prestigious tournament, dubbed as the Olympics of
Snooker, is being participated by 96 cueists in the Men`s
category, 48 in Masters (40+) and 24 in Ladies section.
Bureau Report
Bureau Report