Pankaj Advani, Shahbaz Khan enter semifinals

Cometh the hour, cometh the man and that was exactly what Pankaj Advani did as he rose to the occasion on Monday at the Nahar-MIG All-India Invitational snooker championship at the MIG cricket club.

In the morning, Pankaj needed to win by a margin of at least 4-2 to qualify for the quarters but he didn’t seem to want to leave anything to chance, thrashing his opponent Brijesh Damani 4-0 to go through.

In his quarters, Pankaj took on Alok Kumar in a best-of-nine frame match and seemed to be cruising to a win with a 3- frame lead before a lapse in concentration gave his opponent a chance to win two frames. Pankaj came back strongly and won the sixth and seventh frames to book a spot in the semis. The seventh frame saw a flawless performance as he made the highest break of the tournament with a score of 137.

In another quarterfinal, two-time junior national champion Shahbaz Khan knocked out Manan Chandra winning 5-2.

Quarter Finals: Shahbaz Adil Khan bt Manan Chandra 5-2 (87-40 64-23 38-75 14-97 100-31 78-53 73-31), Pankaj Advani bt Alok Kumar 5-2 (72-25 62-9 76-0 28-68 0-109(59) 85-4 137-0), Saurav Kothari bt Manudev 5-0 (75-8 75-43 57-15 69-38 65-41), Kamal Chawla bt R Girish 5-4 (102-0 51-65 49-57 19-58 62-51 73-12 66-23 52-59 95-6)