Top U-21 snooker quartet beaten

KARACHI: The seeded quartet of Sheheryar Khan, Rabish Pervaiz, Usman Khurshid and Sohaib Usman was at the receiving end on the second day of the Jubilee Insurance 10th National Junior U-21 Snooker Championship 2018 being staged at the Pakistan Sports Complex in Islamabad.

According to the details made available by the Pakistan Billiards & Snooker Association (PBSA) on Sunday, Sheheryar Khan, Rabish Pervaiz and Usman Khurshid, the provincial cup champions as well as Sohaib Usman, the Islamabad Cup champion, were undone by Mahmood Ahmed, Mubashir Munsif, Shaikh Muhammad Mudassir and Muhammad Naseem Akhtar respectively. A total of 34 cueists from Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Balouchistan and Islamabad, having been divided in eight groups, are contesting the preliminary rounds at the end of which the top two cueists from each group will qualify for the knockout phase starting with pre-quarter-finals.

The defending champion Naseem Akhtar, who is also the reigning world champion, has already booked his place in the last 16 by winning his first couple of league matches. Last year’s runner-up Haris Tahir has also cruised into the pre-quarters by winning both his games.