The Hindu : Sport : Alok stays on course

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Nov 26, 2004

Sport

Sport

Alok stays on course

By Michael Ferreira

EINDHOVEN (THE NETHERLANDS), NOV. 25. National snooker champion Alok Kumar kept firmly on course in the league phase of the 2005 IBSF World snooker championship with an efficient 4-0 win over Rafal Gorecki (Poland) in the first session of play on Thursday.

Gorecki was not expected to provide serious opposition to the Indian champion and so it proved to be. Consuming the first frame 84-20, Alok was in the driver's seat at 41-22 in the second when a snooker forced the Pole to give him a fine opening. But the ONGC employee missed an elementary red to allow his opponent to move 46-41 ahead on the colours. Two fouls and misses combined with a brown to pink sequence saw Alok out of danger and into a 2-0 lead.

Alok was at his brilliant best in the third, when he fired in an opening 57 and then raced home with a 66 clearance, a performance equal to the best any top professional could dish out. Gorecki gamely soldiered on to take a slender lead in the fourth, but a 40 took Alok 56-31 ahead on the last red. Gorecki was forced into yet another foul and a miss and promptly conceded the frame and match when Alok potted the last red followed by the black. This was the third match that Alok has won without conceding a frame and will off-set his 0-4 loss to Steve Mifsud yesterday in the event of tie in Group B.

After his champagne performance against Raymond Fung, Manan Chandra's 4-3 defeat of Ben Farnworth in Group C was like the curate's egg - good in parts.

A rousing first visit 40 in the opening frame suggested that he ready to carry on from where he left off on Wednesday, but errors on an easy red and an equally easy brown signalled a possibly long afternoon. And so it was. Though he won the frame 86-37 with a 29 clearance, he lost the next as he lurched from one error to another.

Manan wiped out an early deficit in the third by extracting three fouls and misses and eventually closed out the frame 77-49 with nifty work on the colours.

Farnworth levelled at 2-2, capturing the fourth with crisp single ball potting rather than efficient break building, but lost the next 0-97 courtesy of runs of 40 and 45 by Manan.

The Indian should have established a winning advantage in the sixth but missed a red six inches from the pocket. He never recovered from the consequences as Farnworth built up a 41-0 lead to send the match to the decider. The grim situation triggered a savage response from the Delhi lad who exploded with back-to-back efforts of 50 and 59 for a tremendous end to an otherwise patchy display.

Late on Wednesday night, the Indian number four Rafath Habib soared to an important 4-0 win over Davy Morris (Rep. of Ireland) in Group E. Rafath had cracked in breaks of 67 (118-4) and 69 (85-1) in the first two frames to rock the Irish lad back on his heels. Rafath looked like increasing his advantage when he was poised to take the third on the black, but in his anxiety to nail the frame took his eye off the ball allowing Morris to notch up his first success before the interval.

Rafath however stormed back to capture the next two frames 63-8 and 58-14 to give his confidence a huge boost before his crucial match against Singapore's Keith Boon on Thursday

afternoon. The hard-working Railways employee has lost only one match so far and is well on track in the qualification stakes.

Meanwhile in the other room, defending champion Pankaj Advani won his fourth successive match in Group F by beating Qatar's dangerous Ahmed Al-Sada 4-1. Pankaj had runs of 57 in the first frame, 23 and 36 in the second, a clearance of 40 in the fourth and a superb 74 clearance from 6-52 down in the fifth. Sada had efforts of 59 in the second and 52 in the fifth.

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