Ranking Cup Snooker Championship from tomorrow

KARACHI: A total of 28 cueists, including four juniors, will be taking part in the third edition of the Jubilee Insurance Ranking Cup Snooker Championship 2017 which gets underway here at the Karachi Gymkhana on Friday (tomorrow).

The salient features of the eight-day event were unveiled by Munawwar Hussain Shaikh, president of the Pakistan Billiards & Snooker Association (PBSA), in a media briefing at the Karachi Gymkhana Banquet Hall on Wednesday.

It was announced that besides the top 24 cueists of the country, juniors Mohammad Rafiq, Umar Farooq, Shaikh Mudassir and Naseem Akhtar will also be taking part in the competition whose preliminary round matches will continue for five days.

The cueists have been divided in four groups and all of them will be playing six league matches. The top two cueists from each group will be advancing to the knockout phase, starting with the quarter-finals. The semi-finals and the final will be telecast live on Geo Super.

The championship offers prizes of Rs165,000 with the winner to take home Rs70,000 and the runner-up Rs40,000.

The losing semi-finalists will be getting Rs15,000 each, and the losing quarter-finalists Rs5,000.  The highest break will fetch Rs5,000.

Munawwar revealed that the top two cueists of the country at the end of the event will earn direct qualification for the IBSF World Snooker Championship 2017 to be staged in Doha, Qatar, next month. The third cueist will be selected by the PBSA executive committee.

Syed Usman Qaiser, Chief Manager, Jubilee Life Insurance, expressed his delight with the medal winning performance of Pakistan’s cueists in the recent past.

Azfar Arshad, EVP Operations, Jubilee General Insurance, vowed to continue supporting snooker.

Alamgir Anwar Shaikh, co-chairman of PBSA, said that jobs were being sought for the top cueists to keep them motivated.

According to the draws, top seeded Asjad Iqbal from Punjab features in the Group A in the company of eighth seed Sohail Shahzad (Sindh), Khurram Hussain Agha (Sindh), Agha Bilawal (Sindh), Shahram Changezi (Islamabad), Asif Toba (Punjab) and Mohammad Rafiq (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).

The Group B comprises second seed Shahid Aftab (Punjab), seventh seed Mohammad Bilal (Punjab), Mohammad Ishtiaq (Sindh), Haris Tahir (Punjab), Ahsan Javaid (Punjab), Abu Saim (Punjab) and Umar Farooq (Punjab).

Third seed Mohammad Ijaz (Punjab), sixth seed Mubashir Raza (Punjab), Babar Masih (Punjab), Nadir Miraan (Punjab), Imran Shahzad (Punjab), Shah Khan (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and Shaikh Mudassir (Punjab) constitute the Group C.

The Group D consists of fourth seed Abdul Sattar (Sindh), fifth Mohammad Sajjad (Punjab), Mohammad Asif (Punjab), Majid Ali (Punjab), Zulfiqar Abdul Qadir (Sindh), Sharjeel Mahmood (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and Mohammad Naseem Akhtar (Punjab).