On Sunday, in Gandia, Spain, the edition of this year’s European Snooker Championship kicked off and the Maltese players won all the four matches they played on the first day of this competition during the group stage.
From the five Maltese who are in Spain for this championship, only Brian Cini was not in action while the other four players registered convincing victories.
Aaron Busuttil, Chris Peplow and Joseph Casha didn’t drop a single frame and all registered a 3-0 win.
Joseph Casha, was the first Maltese player in action and won against the Irishman, Dan Merrigan with scores of 83-39, 79-31 and 56-45. Aaron Busuttil found little opposition against one of the 24 Spanish players taking part in their own country during this edition. Oscar Puigpinos against Maltese lost with the scores of 89-46, 77-17 and 95-47 with Busuttil managing to pot a break of 73 points in the second frame.
Chris Peplow against the Scotsman, Ayaan Iqbal managed to take advantage of a mistake that his opponent made in the first frame. At this stage it seemed that Peplow will find himself at a disadvantage from the very beginning. After turning this frame, Peplow was more focused and won the other two frames with ease and in the final frame he eneded the encounter with a break of 76 points with the results of all three frames finishing, 57-50, 71-11 and 76-1.
Philip Ciantar still registered a comfortable win of 3-1 against a youngster from the Netherlands, Hugo Van Houten and shouldn’t missing the last red in the fourth frame he would have easily recorded and ended this encounter with a century or even more. In fact, he stopped on a break of 86 points, which so far is the best break achieved by a Maltese player during this championship. Ciantar won with the scores of, 55-26, 25-90, 48-36 and 90-14.
On Monday, every Maltese player will play one game and Brian Cini begins his adventure as well. The matches of the Maltese on the second day of this championship will be the following:
10:00 Group AO Brian Cini vs Jose Ignacio Enciso (Spain)
12:30 Group E Aaron Busuttil vs Martin Orinak (Slovakia)
12:30 Group F Chris Peplow vs Thomas Janzso (Austria)
12:30 Group G Joseph Casha vs Kayhan Durukan (Turkey)
17:30 Group S Philip Ciantar vs Daan Leyssen Janssens (Spain)
