Asif second seed in Asian Snooker

KARACHI: Former world champion Mohammad Asif has been seeded second for the 32nd Asian Snooker Championship 2016 which gets underway in Doha on Saturday (tomorrow).

According to the draws made available by the Pakistan Billiards & Snooker Association (PBSA) here on Thursday, last year’s runner-up Pankaj Advani of India will be the top seed in the event as Pakistan’s Hamza Akbar, who clinched the title last year in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has turned professional.

Asif, the 2012 world amateur champion, has been drawn in the Group B.

The other three Pakistani cueists, Mohammad Bilal, Sohail Shahzad and Mohammad Sajjad, feature in Groups C, D and J, respectively.

A total of 58 cueists from 20 countries have entered the championship, divided into 12 groups for the preliminary rounds.

Asif has been placed in Group B alongwith Karam Fatima (Syria), Khalid Alastal (Palestine), Omar Al Ajlani (Saudi Arabia) and Abdul Lateef Al Fawal (Qatar).

Bilal, Pakistan’s current national champion, finds himself in the company of Mohammad Shehab (UAE), Meylis Atayev (Turkmenistan), Baek Minhu (South Korea) and Abdul Rehman Abdul Mohsin (Qatar).

Lim Kok Leong of Malaysia leads the pack in the Group C, also having Sohail (Pakistan), Manan Chandra (India), Adel Ibrahim (Iraq) and Ahmed Abdullah Asiri (Saudi Arabia).

Pakistan’s Sajjad is slotted in the Group J alongwith Ahmed Saif (Qatar), Au Chi Chung (Hong Kong), Ahmed Janahi (Bahrain) and Mohammad Shamil Ameen (Sri Lanka).

All the four Pakistani cueists have been training with the home cueists for the past one week.

The PBSA had accepted the invitation of the Qatar Billiards & Snooker Federation (QBSF), the hosts of the 32nd Asian Snooker Champion, to send the Pakistan cueists one week prior to the tournament to hold a joint training and practice camp with the Qatar cueists enabling both teams to prepare well.

The Pakistani officials, Shabbir Daruwala, Naved Kapadia and Nisar Bhagat, will be leaving for Doha on Friday (today).  The PBSA president Alamgir Anwar Shaikh joins them the following day.