Muhammad Asif trashes Sohail Shahzad in quarters: 37th National Snooker Championship 2012

Muhammad Asif trashes Sohail Shahzad in quarters: 37th National Snooker Championship 2012

Second seed Mohammad Asif pocketed an easy victory over the local cueman, Sohail Shahzad by the score line of 5-3 to book the semi-final spot of 2012 Jubilee Insurance 37th National Snooker
Championship at Karachi Gymkhana. Faisalabad’s Asif had a tussling first session before the interval as Shahzad was quite resistant at the baize but still he managed to claim the quarter-final win.

The former National Snooker Champion sprang back into the game when he was trailing Shahzad by 0-1. Asif was put under immense pressure by the experienced Shahzad but the Faisalabad-born
did not lose his focus and kept his cool to eventually claim the quarter-final victory. During the match up, the 2009 National Snooker Championship winner pocketed some outstanding knocks to unsettle his opponent.

Shahzad grabbed the first scrappy frame win quite easily with a magnificent score line of 24-65 to lead the quarter-final 0-1. Asif came strong at the baize in the second frame but his
progress was stopped by Shahzad when he shot a couple of small breaks. Asif was at the brink of tumbling 0-2 down when he capitalised back to hit the winning spot with just one point at 43-42 and pulled level at 1-1.

The pressure on Asif’s mind vanished after he unnerved his veteran opponent in the third frame with a superb clearance of 79. The Faisalabad potter took the match lead by 2-1 with the
third frame victory by 93-1. The scores were levelled at 2-2 by Shahzad at the conclusion of fourth frame as he clinched the set by 25-65.

The former champ was not in a position to afford any pressure situation so he decided to storm back into the game and drag the game into his favour. He showed his classy game in the next
two frames and grabbed back-to-back frame wins by impressive points at 63-20 and 60-25 to regain lead by 4-2.

After tumbling two frames down, Shahzad tried to get back into the game with seventh set triumph by 18-76 to move within one frame up at 4-3. Before he could make any hopes of winning
the match, Aisf finished the game with a cracking blow in the eighth set by the score line of 69-57 that proved to be the final one.

Asif has now booked his place in the semi-final clash against the former two-time National Snooker Champion, Muhammad Sajjad.

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Posted by Zeeshan Gohar on Feb 28 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry