Rupesh added another feather by lifting Asian Billiards trophy;

Noppon becomes Asian U-21 Snooker champion.

07 April 2013

By winning the high quality final match of 12th Asian Billiards championship 2013, the reigning world champion Rupesh Shah further added another feather in his cap. The championship had been played at Indore Tennis Club in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India.

After winning the lag, Alok asked Rupesh to start with white and after small ifs and but, Rupesh registered first game win in best of 11 final match. Alok recovered from that in the second game and leveled the match 1-1 but Rupesh rebounded by producing 67 points break and advanced 2-1.

After that with full composer Alok produced an unfinished century break and further won the next game too to step ahead. Sniffing the danger, Rupesh sum up himself and produced three breaks of 101, 95 and 100 to leave Alok way behind.

Alok, who is well known for his fighting spirit, succeeded to pocket ninth game by producing a break off 76 points but last game and the title was waiting for Rupesh as Alok missed thrice in the tenth game which Rupesh capitalized and sealed the match.

This is India's 10th Asian Billiards title and Rupesh is new entrant in this elite club. He follows previous champions Geet Sethi, Ashok Shandilya, Devendra Joshi, Pankaj Advani and Alok Kumar.

Today morning there was also the final of 14th Asian Under-21 Snooker Championship where Muhammad Majid Ali of Pakistan had a good chance to win and give Asian trophy to the country after recently won World Championship by Muhammad Asif for Pakistan but in the last moments of play he failed to deliver his best to win the championship. On the other side, Noppon played exceptionally well in the second half of the game and clinched Asian title.

The first frame was close that Majid pocketed on black ball by scoring a small break of 39 points and then a break of 66 points in the next to raise the bar by 2-0. Sitting aside for sometime Noppon got some scoring shots and made a break of 58 points in third game to reduce the deficit by 2-1. The fourth game appeared to go in favour of Majid but for a minor mistake he paid big price and Noppon leveled the match 2-2. Identically again where Majid could go ahead 4-2, failed to do so and the result was 3-all.

By that time, Noppon had already been settled onto the game and advanced to 4-3. From thereon, the match kept swinging both the sides and later reached to decider game. In the decider it was clearly evident that pressure started mounting on both the players but finally Noppon got better and ended 6-5 by potting last pink.