13 March 2013: Easy win for Rafath Habib in Snooker Masters North Zone

Former Asian Games gold-medallist and second seed, Rafath Habib showed his class when he beat Sachin Yadav in straight frames while third seed Divya Sharma suffered a shocking 2-3 defeat against Sharad Kumar in the RKG Snooker Masters North Zone championship, here today.

Chennai's Habib, who landed in the capital this morning, was on a roll, potting the ball all around the table skillfully to outplay Uttar Pradesh's Sachin Yadav 3-0 at the Megapool Academy in Dwarka. Habib seemed visibly tired after the long journey from his hometown but made up for it with a facile win over his lesser-known opponent on the fifth day of the championship. Habib hardly broke a sweat as he put it across his opponent with consummate ease to advance to the next round.

In the match between Divya and Sharad, both the cueists found going tough against each other as the match saw fortunes fluctuating from one frame to the other. Delhi's promising cueist, Sharad started with a bang as he virtually toyed with Haryana's Divya before carving out a facile break of 67 in the opening frame. Divya put up an improved show in the second frame as his wealth of experience stood him in good stead.

With scores locked at 1-1, Sharad came up with a break of 52 in the third to surge ahead, much to the surprise of his fancied opponent. Divya quickly made amends to his game and pocketed the fourth frame 64-25 to take the game to the decider. Both the cueists enthralled the audience with their fine potting skills and never-say-die attitude.

However, it was local boy Sharad who walked away with the honours as he held his nerve till the end to emerge victorious 3-2.

Another Delhi veteran, Anuj Uppal registered a comfortable 3-1 win over Uttar Pradesh's Mohammad Shahzeb to advance to the second round while Delhi's Vijay Goel trounced statemate Jasmit Singh Amrit in straight frames.

In other matches of the day, Uttar Pradesh's Vipin Premi put paid to the hopes of Delhi's Amit Verma 3-0 and Punjab's Sahil Nayyar outclassed Madhya Pradesh's Priyank Jaiswal by an identical margin.

India's top cueists, including Sourav Kothari and Dhruv Sitwala, will be seen in action from tomorrow at the championship