Mohammad Bilal faces Asif in snooker final today

By Syed Khalid Mahmood

KARACHI: Mohammad Bilal, the reigning national champion, will clash with Mohammad Asif, a former world champion, in the title clash of NBP Ranking Snooker Championship 2016 here at the NBP Sports Complex on Monday (today).

The all-Punjab best-of-15-frame final, to be telecast live on Geo Super, will commence at 10am. The two semi-finals, shown live on Geo Super, followed contrasting courses.

The first one, between Asif and Zulfiqar Abdul Qadir, went to the wire, but there was a cakewalk victory for Bilal over struggling Mohammad Sajjad in the other one.

Seventh seed Asif, who is also the defending champion, had to bring all his expertise into play to overcome the unseeded Zulfiqar 6-5 with the frame scores of 13-66, 76-46, 48-77, 39-89, 83-26, 29-60, 87-1, 60-41, 75-7, 64-71, 61-50. Fourth seed Bilal overwhelmed sixth seed Sajjad 6-2 with the scores of 55-44, 72-59, 61-23, 64-50, 0-82, 62-17, 40-70, 71-1.

Local youngster Zulfiqar, who was the only semi-finalist to have remained undefeated in what had turned out to be a fiercely fought event, went down fighting as he did not allow any liberty to his more experienced opponent at any stage of the encounter. The last couple of frames in particular were mighty close and tense.

The youngster was successful in winning one of them but he narrowly lost the last one.Asif, having emerged triumphant in tougher contests than this one, had to produce his top game to edge out the Karachi boy.

The opening frame was clinched by Zulfiqar but Asif won the second frame. The local youngster went 3-1 up by taking the next couple of frames. Asif made it 2-3 by grabbing the fifth frame but Zulfiqar regained two-frame lead quickly.

Asif got into his element with a break of 72 in the seventh frame and followed it up with another classy break of 74 in the ninth frame to move 5-4 up.

The contest was kept alive as Zulfiqar won the 10th frame and it was Asif’s turn to win the thriller in the decisive 11th frame.

There was little thrill in the second semi-final as Bilal displayed awesome cue control against Sajjad.

Bilal, a shining star from Mandi Bahauddin, looked in command from the outset and soon had 4-0 lead. He compiled a break of 65 in the second frame.

Sajjad, two-times national champion from Sargodha, showed flashes of brilliance by chalking up a break of 81 which helped him win the fifth frame.

Bilal was back to winning ways in the next frame to make it 5-1. He did not make much of an attempt to seal the deal in the seventh frame. The match went into the eighth frame and almost inevitably Bilal won it comfortably to sail into the final. He started with a break of 52 and there was not much Sajjad could do to extend the match further.