Shahid Aftab set to make debut in World Snooker KARACHI: Shahid Aftab, having become the top ranked cueist of the country, is set to make his international debut during the 2013 IBSF World Snooker Championships to be staged in Daugavpils, Latvia, from September 27 to December 8. Shahid, who emerged triumphant in the Jubilee Insurance 3rd Ranking Snooker Championship 2013 here on Thursday, will be travelling to Latvia alongwith second seed Imran Shahzad and the reigning world champion, Mohammad Asif. Imran, who made his international debut at Korat, Thailand, in 2007, will be making his fourth appearance in the World Championship, having also participated at Damascus, Syria, in 2010 and at Bangalore, India, the following year. Asif, who won the National Championship in 2009, made his debut in the World Championship later the same year at Hyderabad, India. He missed the action in the global event in 2010 but returned to represent the country in 2011. He then rewrote history by winning the world crown at Sofia, Bulgaria, last year. Asif became only the second cueist from Pakistan to have won the World Snooker Championship with Mohammad Yousuf being the first one when he reached the summit in his seventh attempt at Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1994. Yousuf had been participating in the World Championship every year since 1988. After winning the title in 1994, he appeared in the 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2000 editions of the premier amateur event. Still active in the national circuit, he has had the distinction of playing in exactly a dozen editions of the World Championship, which is the Pakistan record for the highest appearances. He also holds the record of winning the National Championship on the highest number of occasions. Saleh Mohammad, who is now settled in Afghanistan, represented Pakistan in as many as 11 editions of the World Championship from 1993 to 2004. He could have surpassed Yousuf’s record if the event was not scrapped in 2001 and 2005. He had come closest to claiming the world title in 2003 when, after winning the earlier 14 games on a trot, he was downed in the final by Pankaj Advani of India at Jiangmen, China. Naveen Kumar Perwani participated in the World Championships in 1992, 1993, 1995, and 2006 while Khurram Hussain Agha earned this honour in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2008. Mohammad Sajjad has appeared in a couple of editions of the World Championship (2009 and 2010) while Sohail Shahzad and Asjad Iqbal represented Pakistan in the global event in 2010 and 2012 respectively.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 06:47:49 +0000
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