Pro Snooker World Cup: Snooker chief satisfied with Sajjad, Hamza

Cueists played to their strengths against the world’s best, says Sheikh

KARACHI: Pakistan Billiards and Snooker Association (PBSA) President Alamgir Sheikh termed the performance of Mohammad Sajjad and Hamza Akbar satisfactory after the duo crashed out of the group stages of the Professional Snooker World Cup in Wuxi, China.

It was a narrow miss for Pakistan as they fell short by just one point, finishing with 13 points after five matches behind Australia (14), while group leaders Wales had 20 points.

Two top-ranked teams from each group were to qualify for the next stage and had Pakistan ended up with 14 points, they would have made it through.

“Overall it was been a satisfactory performance by Pakistan, the cueists only narrowly missed out on qualification for the next stage,” Sheikh told The Express Tribune. “This will serve as a good learning curve for both Hamza and Sajjad, who played against the top players of the world.”

However, Sheikh believes that Pakistan’s 3-2 loss to Poland was disappointing. “I feel we shouldn’t have lost against Poland because that was one team we should have beaten easily. They were easy prey compared to Australia and Northern Ireland.”

Pakistan lost their first group match 5-0 against Wales followed by a 3-2 win versus Australia. They then lost to Poland before upsetting Qatar 4-1, and finally triumphed with the same score against Northern Ireland, which unfortunately was not enough to progress to the next stage.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2015.

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