Ace Indian cueist Pankaj Advani dished out another superb performance to outclass Iran's Amir Sarkhosh in the finals and claim yet another title at the IBSF World Snooker Championship in Doha on Monday. His deadly attacking game coupled with phenomenally tight safety play helped Advani to secure his 18th World Championship title with an 8-2 win over Amir at the Al-Arabi Sports Club.
The best-of-15 frame final witnessed Amir pocketing the first frame rather comfortably.
The Iranian looked strong and focused in the second frame too, progressing well and nearing a 2-0 scoreline, but a missed green pot gave a lifeline to Pankaj as he seized the opportunity with both hands and drew parity.
Pankaj never looked back from there as he raced to a 5-2 lead. He, however, survived a scare in a close battle in the 4th frame.
A massive break of 134 by Amir in the 6th did not faze the Indian as he immediately widened the lead to 5-2 before going into the 1st session break.
A long red pot against the nap with a perfect position for blue saw him draw first blood after the interval with a break of 45.
Couple of safety exchanges later, Pankaj once again trapped Amir with a perfect snooker to extract an opening. Another long red pot spectacularly executed saw him make another useful break of 17 points to increase the margin leaving the cue ball in an unplayable position.
A hapless Amir couldn't do much as his wild shot in frustration saw Pankaj come back to table once again to seal the frame with another break of 41 points and take a commanding lead of 6-2.
Though Amir got the first opening in the 9th, a missed red pot saw Pankaj unfold his vast repertoire of strokes to compile a magnificent frame-winning break of 77 points with only 4 reds remaining on the table.
Placing himself just one frame away from winning another world title Pankaj once again established his stronghold in the 10th frame by scoring the first 22 points.
However, an unexpected miss saw Amir open his account in the frame and score 30 points to take a slender lead of 8 points.
However, a calm and composed Pankaj patiently waited for his opportunity and soon brought the score to 47-47, before clearing the remaining colours, the frame and the match to lift his 18th world title.
Result:
Pankaj Advani (India) beat Amir Sarkhosh (Iran) 8-2: 19-71; 79-53; 98-23; 69-62; 60-05; 0-134; 75-07; 103-4; 77-13; 67-47.
