National 8Ball & 9Ball Pool Championship 2008

Kolkata - West Bengal

16-26 May 2008

Maiden 9Ball Pool Title for Rafath ...

On a day of a desperate fight back and a hopeless no-show, Rafath Habib of Railways lifted his maiden 9 ball National Pool title by beating Sumeet Talwar of Chandigarh in the final of ONGC-Spring Club National 9Ball Pool Championship which concluded today at the Spring Club in Kolkata.

In a match between a thorough-bred Snooker cue-man and a hard-core Pool player, Rafath Habib, the Asian Games Gold Medalist in Snooker, applied all his experience and expertise to impose his authority and  subdue Sumit before the lanky Pool specialist could get going. Like a calculated killer, with a fine and gritty display of aggressive potting and well-controlled positioning, Rafat raced to an insurmountable lead of 10-1 in a race to 11 racks final! Only a miracle could have saved the match for Sumit.

With some good game and good luck he did pull back to 10-5 but that was only as much as Rafath would allow him to do.

Sumit’s low-key show was much due to the energy-draining fight-back he staged to oust Faisal Khan of Railways in the semi-final. Down 6-9, he clawed his way back to the decider to pip out Faisal.

In the other semi-final, Rafat had earlier destroyed Shahbaaz of PSPB 10-1 in a similar fashion as he did with Sumit. It was a land-slide of crashing racks which left the Kolkata lad dazed, appearing as he was in his first National semi-final. However, Shahbaaz made amends by edging out Faisal Khan for the 3^rd place 7-5.