IBSF World Billiards 2010

22 AUGUST 2010

Pre-Quarter Finals: Gilly on fire; Mike Russell sailed smoothly

Table 1: The first match of the Last 16 stage was between defending champion Pankaj Advani (India) and Gary Oliver from New Zealand. Gary took the advantage of Advani’s struggle in the opening game and pocketed it playing consistently. Pankaj instantly changed the gear and sealed next four games with one century break in between.

Table 2: Match 2 was between Myanmar players Kyaw Oo and Nay Thway Oo. Nay Thway Oo, who has played brilliantly so far including a victory over Geet Sethi in league stage, falls down in front of Kyaw Oo. Kyaw Oo must be aware how to deal with his country mate and pocketed first three games in a short time. Fourth game, Nay smashed two breaks of 87 and 53 to narrow the lead but that was not sufficient as Kyaw Oo sealed the match pocketing the fourth constructing a break of 66.

Table 3: Sourav Kothari was aware that Rupesh is on high confidence with two games win over Russell and started by winning the first game which included a break of 95. The confidence of Rupesh was much higher than Sourav predicted. Rupesh countered with two century breaks in the next two games. In the fourth game Rupesh made two small but decent breaks to stop Sourav on 143 and took a 3-1 lead. In te fifth game again Rupesh crafted 89 to advance into quarter finals.

Table 4: The man who is most consistent in the last few months is none other than Peter Gilchrist (Singapore). Gilly due to suffering from illness, performed below his caliber and qualified from the group as No.4. But his today’s morning match was ‘match of the session’ where he smashed three unfinished breaks in first three games against Thawat Sujaritthurakarn of Thailand. In the fourth game Thawat made break of 67, but that was not sufficient to bar Gilchrist from reaching the quarter finals. Gilly won 4-1.

Table 5: Struggling badly on first day, Indian legend Geet Sethi was completely back in form and registered his win in straight sets against Thai Praprut Chaithanasakun. Second game he smashed unfinished 150.

Table 6 & 7: Both the matches on Table No.6 & 7 were marathon matches as they reached into decider games. Dhruv Sitwala played on Table 6 against Alok Kumar. After losing the first game to Alok, Dhruv pocketed the next three games to take a 3-1 lead and moved to seal the match in fourth with a break of 94. In a hurry to close down the proceedings, Dhruv fumbled on 139 and missed. Alok without wasting the opportunity pocketed fifth and sixth games to level the match. Dhruv saved the match by crafting 133 in the decider and moved into quarter finals.

Unlike the crowd’s expectations to see Ashok Shandilya into the quarter finals, B. Bhaskar forced Shandilya to play a decider despite trailing 1-3. Released from the pressure of trailing, Bhaskar crafted 102 in the decider and advanced to the quarters.

Table 8: The match on Table No.8 was the first to finish and the reason pretty simple – Englishman Mike Russell playing Korean Chul Ho Hwang. Three century breaks in the first, second and fourth games was enough for Mike to register his win over the Korean.

Peter Gilchrist (Singapore) went down fighting against Devendra Joshi (India) in the deciding frame. Joshi was in fine touch and smashed three century breaks of 127, 151 and 103 in first, third and fifth game respectively. Peter failed to produce good breaks in both the games he won.

Session II : Crowd to witness Geet-Russell tussle again; Peter on challenge to stop Pankaj

Match 1: The first Quarter final match, Kyaw Oo (Myanmar) played with the reigning champion Pankaj Advani. Pankaj very quickly crafted two century breaks in the first two games and took a 2-0 lead. In the third game Kyaw Oo put a bar in his smooth sailing and crafted four worthy breaks of 85 & 42 in the third, and 89 & 59 in the fourth game to level the match at 2 all. Kyaw Oo tried very well to step ahead of Pankaj, but on a break of 113 he missed out. As Pankaj rarely wastes such opportunities, he did not this time. Crafting break of 82 in the fifth and a century break in the next, he advanced to the Semi Finals.

Match 2: In the morning it was Thawat and now Rupesh, but Gilly (Peter Gilchrist) didn’t care. Carrying the same form from pre-quarters to quarter finals with the same result. Rupesh Shah tried to stop him but Gilly’s two century breaks in the first two games followed with 74 in the third and a little 46 were sufficient to in win the match one sided (4-0) and challenge Pankaj Advani in the Semi Final match tomorrow.

Match 3: Geet was back in the form he started in the quarter final match to play against country mate Dhruv Sitwala. In the first two games Geet, with two beautifully crafted breaks of 106 and 95, advanced to 2-0. Dhruv Sitwala, who was sitting idle in first two games explored his all shots in the third game and with two worthy breaks of 85 and 65 narrowed the lead 1-2.

In the fourth game, spectators were lucky to witness a sequence of nearly 7 awesome shots consecutively, those a legend like Geet only can play. A couple of them were calculated even in millimeters. All were recovery shots when he went out of position on 120 and carried on to win the game. In the fifth game, Dhruv countered and won with a break of 92. Sheer hard luck for Dhruv in the sixth game, when he crafted a break of 85 and was in perfect position. He started scoring with his ball and after making 5 or 7 odd points he started playing with wrong ball mistakenly. The referee and Opponent (Geet) did not notice. The shots continued and shortly Dhruv reached on 89 using top-table skills, till the Referee noticed and pointed out about the wrong ball. Geet was on 9 points at that time. Getting this as a god gift, Geet constructed 141 to seal the match in his favour.

Match 4: As usual Mike again finished his match first amongst all four quarter final matches. While playing against B. Bhaskar (India), the first game he won with two breaks of 76 and 75. In the second game Bhaskar showed some class and scored a break of 119 to level the match 1-1. Mike pocketed the next two games with a break of 148 in the fourth. Starting the fifth game to finish the proceedings, Mike missed-out on a score of 29. Bhaskar fully tried to utilize this opportunity by crafting a century break to narrow the gap, but could not keep control and fell short by 9 points (141 score, 120 break) leaving open table for Mike. Mike requiring 121 to win the match, did the same.

Semi Final matches are tomorrow at 10 O’clock in the morning.