Geet Sethi, Pankaj Advani back to their winning ways

Geet Sethi and Pankaj Advani returned to winning ways as five Indians entered quarterfinals of the time-format at the IBSF World Billiards Championship here on Wednesday.

Dhruv Sitwala, Ashok Shandilya and Devendra Joshi are the other three Indians to advance to the next stage.

Sethi defeated Tae Hoon Jung of Korea 1950-249 to notch up his second win on the trot while Advani beat Aidan Murray of Ireland 1175-598.

On Wednesday, two 500 breaks in the third session turned everybody’s attention to table number three, when Sethi played against Tae Hoon Jung on the second day of the championship.

In another match, Sitwala, who upset Peter Gilchrist in the third session, folded up the round robin with a win beating England’s Gary Oliver 1131-546 and a place in the quarterfinals.

Well composed and completely focused, Sethi was back to his real self. “He (Sethi) is absolutely in command. He at times hardly moved an inch but the points were flowing,” said Devendra Joshi, who went down to the might of Mike Russell in the adjacent table.

Defending champion Pankaj Advani also came up with a classic game. Coming back to the tables for the 4th session, Sethi got the better of Bhaskar Balachandran 1583-628 to maintain a clean slate.
Mike Russell continued his good form with yet another 700-mark break, this time against

Devendra Joshi. Joshi who had beaten both Chul Ho Hwang (Korea) and Sri Lankan Abdul Omar on Tuesday, lost to Russell 671-1644 in his third round.

Balachandran was shocked by Mynamar’s Kyaw Oo 1001-522. It was the second win by Kyaw Oo, who beat Alok Kumar 1188-595, on Tuesday.