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.

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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)