Former World No.1 Mohamed Asif of Pakistan was left stunned as he lost his third group stage match to unseeded Ko Htet of Myanmar in the IBSF World Snooker Championship at Al Arabi Sports Club Indoor Hall yesterday. Yesterday’s loss will surely affect Asif’s seeding for the knockout stages.
For Htet, the win will without doubt be one of the biggest of his career and should provide a timely morale boost. Now he will be hoping he can kick on and regenerate same form he displayed earlier in September this year at Indoor Asian Games to secure bronze medal.
Yesterday, the Myanmar cueist played high quality game and secured first three frames quite easily. He also made an impressive break of 91 in first frame to gear-up his momentum. Already up by three frames, Htet was about to close the proceedings when Asif attempted a comeback break of 58 to cut the deficit.
However, Htet secured fifth frame by sending contribution of 69 points before the former World champion could do more damage. Lee Chun Wai, from Hong Kong too faced a tough fight from Welshman Jack Bradcord in the second session of the day. For both the players, situation kept changing with alternate frame wins to both. However, Jack looked for a victory, but Lee scored good points in 6th frame and forced decider. In decider, Lee converted the first chance into 84-point clearance to pick up 4-3 win.
In the women’s, Pui Ying Chu of Hong Kong rallied after losing the first frame to edge out Theresa Whitten of Australia 3-1 and register her first win of the competition. She had lost her first two matches earlier.
Theresa had taken a frame lead initially when Pui Ying notched second frame with a break of 39 points to make it level. After that she did well in subsequent frames to edge out her rival from Australia.
In the Masters group, Alok Kumar of India survived with 3-2 victory against Phaithoon Phonbun of Thailand. Despite having good start in first two frames, faced three breaks (55, 51 and 61) from Phaithoon and forced to play decider. He was down in decider too but the played some good knocks to secure a nail-biting 3-2 victory. (ibsf.info)