Bilal becomes country’s top ranked cueist

KARACHI: Muhammad Bilal, by winning the recently held Jubilee Insurance 44th National Snooker Championship 2019, has become the top ranked cueist of the country.

According to the latest ranking chart, announced by Naved Kapadia, Tournament Director, Pakistan Billiards & Snooker Association (PBSA), here on Thursday, Bilal has once again moved to the top slot as he regained the national crown after three years.

Asjad Iqbal, who ended as the runner up in the Nationals last month, has moved to the second position while Zulfiqar Abdul Qadir and Ali Haider, the losing semifinalists, have been ranked third and fourth respectively in the latest rankings.

The quartet of Babar Masih, Muhammad Ijaz, Muhammad Asif and Agha Bilawal, who were eliminated in the quarterfinals, have been placed at fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth respectively. Six of the top eight cueists belong to the province of Punjab while other two, Zulfiqar and Bilawal, are from Sindh. There is no representation of other three units of the PBSA, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Islamabad, in the top eight this time round.

The trend remains almost unchanged in the list of next eight cueists as well, with five of them being from Punjab, two from Sindh and just one from KPK.

Sohail Shahzad and Sultan Muhammad, both of them from Sindh, find themselves at number nine and 10 respectively while the Punjab quintet of Muhammad Naseem Akhtar, Haris Tahir, Shahid Aftab, Imran Shahzad and Muhammad Majid Ali are ranked 11th, 12th, 13th, 15th and 16th respectively. Rambail Gul, ranked 14th, is the only cueist from KPK to have forced his way into the elite list of top 16.The top 16 cueists of the country will be entitled to direct entry in the second national ranking tournament of the year, scheduled to be held after Eid holidays.