The Hindu : Sport / Billiards & Snooker : Jin Long is Asian champion

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 01, 2005

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Sport - Billiards & Snooker

Jin Long is Asian champion

Michael Ferreira

BANGKOK: Jin Long, the five-time Chinese national champion, beat compatriot Cai Jianzhong 6-4 in the best-of-eleven-frames in the 2005 Sangsom Asian Snooker Championship on Sunday evening.

With the 18-year-old Ding Jun-hui already establishing himself as a threat in the professional ranks, China thus takes another step towards justifying the widely-held perception that it is poised to take over world snooker supremacy in due course.

For his labours over the past eight days, Jin takes home a cheque for a relatively paltry amount of 2500 US dollars, but the amount pales into insignificance before the massive boost it provides to his confidence and his standing in his country and indeed the Asian community.

One of the other rewards of winning the title this year is that Jin is assured of a place in the Main Tour of professional snooker, a lucrative step towards joining Ding in the Great Chinese Leap forward in the game. Since reaching the final of the Asian in Karachi three years ago, it seemed to me that the likeable Jin had hit a plateau and the fact that the younger Ding had overtaken him by some lengths rankled.

It was no secret that he wanted this title badly, even desperately, and nothing was going to stop him especially after his somewhat fortuitous win over Saleh Mohammed on Saturday.

No pushover

Cai, however, was no pushover, and in fact led 2-4 in a display that had Jin muttering to himself and petulantly throwing his hand towel on to his chair whenever he approached the table. But he held himself together when it mattered, turning the screws in a savage six frame streak to which Cai had no answers.

Losing the scrappy first frame, Jin hit back with a 70 only for Cai to take the next two aided by runs of 59 and 61. A missed black off the spot by Cai gave Jin the early initiative with a 44, and he went on to secure the fifth with a particularly well-constructed 39 clearance. A ludicrous series of misses by both players in the sixth ended when Cai lashed in a 62 for a 4-2 lead.

Cai's opening 22 in the seventh looked ominous, but a missed red proved disastrous. Jin seized on the lapse in concentration to craft a decisive 45 in the eighty and continued the momentum with a 50 and 30 in the ninth.

Looking positively shattered, Cai missed a six in red in the tenth prompting Sam Chong, the former Asian champion and now Malaysian coach to say, "Finished, Cai finished." Jin seemed to sense it too, and flowed through a 58, each pot positively radiating confidence. Cai gamely responded with 22, but at 63-39 on the colours finally threw in the towel.

In the first semifinal on Saturday, Jin Long beat Pakistan's Saleh Mohammed 5-4 in a match that made up in drama what it lacked in sheer quality.

Later, his little colleague Cai Jianzhong broke a million hearts in Thailand with an equally dramatic 5-4 win over Noppadon Sangnil, the lone survivor of the formidable five-man Thai contingent.

The Saleh-Jin Long encounter was expected to produce fireworks. Long's consistent form had reached a crescendo with a sizzling 137 against Manan Chandra in Friday's quarterfinal. Saleh, tempered like Toledo steel after surviving two tough deciders against Pankaj Advani and Keith Boon, must have felt that his life's dream of winning a major international championship was just a breath away. After his match against Pankaj, he confidently asserted to the Pakistan team management that he would go all the way.

The scores: Final: Jin Long beat Cai Jianzhong 6-4 (39-64, 70(70)-0, 61-73(59), 39-69(61), 94-25, 34-75(62), 61-23, 81(50)-8, 76(56)-26k 72(58)-39)

Semifinals: Jin Long beat Saleh Mohammed 21-81, 40-59, 81-47, 77(54)-35, 56-48, 77-18, 0-86(86), 0-64, 69-36); Cai Jianzhong beat Noppadon Sangnil 12-50, 40-51, 79-20, 95(95)-0, 71-9, 74-5,2, 28-54, 47-68, 79-6)

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