Mixed day for Advani

 In a not-so-good start to his World Billiards Championship campaign, Indian ace Pankaj Advani lost his opening game against defending champion Peter Gilchrist but later made up with two straight wins, here.

Former champion Advani lost his way after winning the first two frames to go down 2-3 against the Singaporean ace in a keen battle.

Advani, however, ouplayed Adian Murray and Brain Harvey with a 3-0 scoreline respectively.Former Asian Billiards champion Alok Kumar had a clinical day winning all his matches 3-0.Ahmedabad cueist Dhvaj Haria also won all his matches, losing only a frame. 

All Indians in the fray cruised along with easy wins in the league stages and are half way through to qualifying for the last-32. 

The World Championship, which started on Monday, has invited 55 entries from eight countries with cueists having been divided in to 11 groups of five each.

Results (150-up, Indians only): Peter Gilchrist (Sin) bt Pankaj Advani 3-2 (5-150 (101), 48-150 (89), 150 (107) –108 (62), 150 (75) -43, 150 (83) –97 (55); B Bhaskar bt Christopher Taylor (Eng) 3-0; D Rajkumar bt Todd Hayward (Aus) 3-2; Jaiveer Dhingra bt Arthur Winn (Eng) 3-0; Dhvaj Haria bt Gaye Jones (Eng) 3-0; Ashok Shandilya bt Mark Hill (Eng) 3-0; Alok Kumar (Ind) 3 bt Peter Atkinson (Eng) 3-0; Sourav Kothari bt Devendra Joshi 3-2; Siddharth Parikh bt Eddie Fielding (Eng) 3-0; S Venkateswaran bt Adam Clarke (Eng) 3-0; Dhruv Sitwala bt Jonathan Marwood (Eng) 3-0; Rupesh Shah bt Carl Walter Steiner (Aut) 3-0; Arun Agrawal bt Sushrut Pandia 3-1; Arun Agrawal bt Phil Davis (Eng) 3-0; David Causier (Eng) bt Aditya Agrawal 3-1; V Subramanian bt Jamie Barker (Eng) 3-2.