China, Thailand cracked with century breaks in opening session

01 April 2013

Thai player Boonyarit Keattikul and Zhou Yelong from China registered century breaks of 101 and 100 respectively in their opening matches on Day one of ONGC 14th Asian Under-21 Snooker championship started today here in Indore Tennis Club, Indore, Madhya Pradesh in India.

Boonyarit played his first match against Maung Maung of Hongkong. Maung had a little chances in the first frame where he scored 54 points in response to Boonyarit's score of 73 points but after that Boonyarit did not allow him to do much and sealed the match 105-00, 86-14, 80-11. In this proceeding he scored a break of 101 points in second frame.

In another match, the Chinese player Zhou Yuelong also registered century break in his first match against Mohammad Majid Ali of Pakistan. After winning first frame 62-28, Zhou cracked the century break and moved ahead 2-Nil. Though Majid managed to win the next frame on black ball game, but that's the only frame he could win as Zhou sealed the match 4-1 by scoring another break of 83 points in 5th frame.

Continuing the same momentum, Zhou Yuelong registered another century break of 100 points playing against Leong Nanhoi of Hong Kong. In this match, Zhou gave away first frame in a tight situation but had left nothing for Leong in the remaining frames before closing the proceedings 47-61, 114(100)-06, 87(69)-23, 88(59)-01, 76-17.

It was a fair start for Indian youngsters. Where India No.2 Nitesh Madan won his first match 4-1 against Leong Nanhoi (Hong Kong), Dhvaj Haria suffered a defeat Nil-4 against the hands of 2009 Under-21 World Champion, Noppon Saengkham of Thailand.

However, winning enjoyment of Nitesh did not last long as he failed to win the decider frame of his second session match against Maung Maung of Myanmar. Down 1 frame to 3, Maung capitalized rest of the frames and pulled a sensational 4-3 win over India No.2, Nitesh.

In this session, Rahul Sachdev also failed to deliver any thing great and had no other option rather bowing down to Chinese player Zhu Yinghui 4-NIL.

In Billiards, Indians did well on the opening day. The reigning world champion, Rupesh Shah and India No.2 B. Bhaskar won their matches in straight set of games 4-Nil.

The former Asian champion and National winner Alok Kumar registered an important win against Nay Thway Oo of Myanmar. Alok won first two games and had a break of 99 points in second game but lost next two and the score equaled 2-2. From then Alok did not give any loose string to Nay Thway Oo and won remaining two frames to seal the match 4-2. In the last game also Alok had a break of 95 points.

An upset result came from Table No.4 where former World Champion Ashok Shandilya suffered a shock-defeat by the hands of Vietnam's Nguyen Thanh Binh. After losing the first game, Binh won next two games to obtain 2-1 lead but Ashok leveled the match 2-2 by winning the next. Binh Pulled another game and Ashok leveled again in same fashion but couldn't maintain in the decider where Binh scored a break of 51 points to win the match 4-3.