10th Asian Under-21 Snooker Championship 2009 PYC Club - Pune 11-19 April 2009

Daily Reports

14.04.2009

Shahbaz... a frame away from Quarter Final berth!

Shahbaz Khan from India

Indian national champion Shahbaaz Adil Khan, with  a stunning 3-1 frames victory over  Yutapop Pakpoj of Thailand  in a Group `A’ match of  the Rewale Group Asian Under 21 Snooker Championship 2009 at the PYC (Hindu) Gymkhana here today.

He goes to clash on with top seed Li Yuan of China – who went down tamely to Yuttapop Pakpoj of Thailand in straight frames yesterday. To clear the last hurdle all that Shabaaz has to do in his last match on Thursday is to see at least he wins a frame against Li Yuan

Shabaaz’s victory today has placed him in a tantalizing position of winning 12 frames and dropping only two for a frame average of ten. Pakpoj, who despite the loss to Shabaaz has clinched a place with a frame average of 10 (13 frames won and three lost). Li Yuan has a frame average of 5 (9 frames won and lost four) and to qualify for the quarter finals he has to score an emphatic 3-0 win against Shahbaaz that will improve his frame average to 8 and diminish Shahbaaz’a average to 7.

Two cueists from China and Thailand.Zhang Anda , the IBSF World Under 21 Snooker runner up –who has two century breaks to his credit and Cao Yupeng,  along  with

Thailand’s YutapopPakoj and Thanawat Thirapongaiboon and Sohail Vahedi of Iran have made into the last eight stage of the championship.

The Indian national champion despite dropping the first frame came strongly to capture the next three with a break of 53 in the second frame to clinch the match 30-70, 67-36, 68-8, 58-43.

In Billiards segment, Thawat Sujaritthurakaran of Thailand gives opening shock to current World Billiards runner-up (Point Format) Devendra Joshi in straight sets of 3-0. Indian players somehow finds difficult to clinch victory in their opening matches like Rupesh won the match after losing first game and Sourav was 1-2 down before finising of 3-2 in his favour. Later in the day Dhruv Sitwala also lost to Myanmar's Aung Htay. Dhruv started with two unfinished breaks of 102 and 100 but later Htay give tough fight to Dhruv and wins last three games to clinch the match.