Gilly on fire; Mike, Geet sailed smoothly

Table 1: The first match of the Last 16 stage was between defending champion Pankaj Advani (India) and Gary Oliver from New Zealand. Gary took the advantage of Advani’s struggle in the opening game and pocketed it playing consistently. Pankaj instantly changed the gear and sealed next four games with one century break in between.

Table 2: Match 2 was between Myanmar players Kyaw Oo and Nay Thway Oo. Nay Thway Oo, who has played brilliantly so far including a victory over Geet Sethi in league stage, falls down in front of Kyaw Oo. Kyaw Oo must be aware how to deal with his country mate and pocketed first three games in a short time. Fourth game, Nay smashed two breaks of 87 and 53 to narrow the lead but that was not sufficient as Kyaw Oo sealed the match pocketing the fourth constructing a break of 66.

Table 3: Sourav Kothari was aware that Rupesh is on high confidence with two games win over Russell and started by winning the first game which included a break of 95. The confidence of Rupesh was much higher than Sourav predicted. Rupesh countered with two century breaks in the next two games. In the fourth game Rupesh made two small but decent breaks to stop Sourav on 143 and took a 3-1 lead. In te fifth game again Rupesh crafted 89 to advance into quarter finals.

Table 4: The man who is most consistent in the last few months is none other than Peter Gilchrist (Singapore). Gilly due to suffering from illness, performed below his caliber and qualified from the group as No.4. But his today’s morning match was ‘match of the session’ where he smashed three unfinished breaks in first three games against Thawat Sujaritthurakarn of Thailand. In the fourth game Thawat made break of 67, but that was not sufficient to bar Gilchrist from reaching the quarter finals. Gilly won 4-1.

Table 5: Struggling badly on first day, Indian legend Geet Sethi was completely back in form and registered his win in straight sets against Thai Praprut Chaithanasakun. Second game he smashed unfinished 150.

Table 6 & 7: Both the matches on Table No.6 & 7 were marathon matches as they reached into decider games. Dhruv Sitwala played on Table 6 against Alok Kumar. After losing the first game to Alok, Dhruv pocketed the next three games to take a 3-1 lead and moved to seal the match in fourth with a break of 94. In a hurry to close down the proceedings, Dhruv fumbled on 139 and missed. Alok without wasting the opportunity pocketed fifth and sixth games to level the match. Dhruv saved the match by crafting 133 in the decider and moved into quarter finals.

Unlike the crowd’s expectations to see Ashok Shandilya into the quarter finals, B. Bhaskar forced Shandilya to play a decider despite trailing 1-3. Released from the pressure of trailing, Bhaskar crafted 102 in the decider and advanced to the quarters.

Table 8: The match on Table No.8 was the first to finish and the reason pretty simple – Englishman Mike Russell playing Korean Chul Ho Hwang. Three century breaks in the first, second and fourth games was enough for Mike to register his win over the Korean.