Indians off to a good start

The World Billiards Championship got off to a perfect start with all seven Indian players getting past the round robin group stages on the second day on Monday at the Dolomen hotel in the city of Qawra here.

Barring Alok Kumar and rookie Sourav Kothari, the rest of the field—Geet Sethi, Pankaj Advani, Devendra Joshi, Ashok Shandilya and Dhruv Sitvala— topped their respective groups. The knock-out round of the sixteen players, now identified from the eight groups, will be held in the evening session later today.

Among the group toppers, Devendra Joshi, Pankaj Advani and Australian Robby Foldvari came up with impressive straight frame wins (best of five) in all their three league matches.Earlier yesterday, Joshi started off India’s campaign in style reeling off a 151 unfinished break against Alan Puan.