Chris Peplow and Joseph Casha advance to the next rounds

After Wednesday’s conclusion of the extensive group phase of the World Snooker Championship of the World Snooker Federation (WSF) taking place in Sofia, Bulgaria, 78 players have been confirmed to qualify for the knockout rounds. The two Maltese players who managed to advance to this phase were Chris Peplow, who had actually already qualified the day before, and Joseph Casha.

Chris Peplow continued in excellent form and had little difficulty to defeat Englishman Steven Croker. Peplow won 3-0 with frame scores of: 82-30, 47-25, 75(55)-0. With four wins, he finished top of Group X. Along with Peplow, 25 other players remained unbeaten in the group phase and will now bypass a preliminary round and play directly into the last 64. Peplow doesn’t know his opponent yet, but it will be the winner of the qualifying match between Scottish player Steven Wardropper and Englishman Luke Pinches. Peplow’s last 64 match is scheduled for Thursday at 3 p.m. and will be best from seven frames, as is the case for the knockout phase until the semi-finals.

The other Maltese qualifier, Joseph Casha, had an easy win in his last group game. He beat Romanian Matei Unguru 3-0 with scores of: 51-25, 47-8, 63-21. In the knockout round, Casha has to play a preliminary match to qualilfy with the last 64. On Thursday, as early as 9 a.m., he will play against Vasilije Pešić of Serbia who in the group phase lost to Alex Borg.
In fact, on Wednesday it was a surprise that Alex Borg was eliminated after losing his last group match, 3-2, to Englishman Steve Crowley, who did not win a game in this competition and just won two frames during his three previous three matches.

Two other players that have been eliminated were Brian Cini and Aaron Busuttil who were hoping that Sebastian Milewski from Poland (in Cini’s group) and the Chinese youngster, Wang Xinzhong (in Busuttil’s group), would fail in their last game. This was the only chance for them to have the possibility to advance beyond the first round, even though Cini on Wednesday, in his last game, won easily 3-0 against Romanian Andrei Călin. Although Cini’s opponent had limitations, the Maltese managed breaks of over 50 points in each frame, in fact in the third and last frame he produced two breaks. Cini won with scores of: 64(55)-13, 94(64)-0, 127(56, 67)-0.

Another Maltese player who ended his adventure in Bulgaria was Chris Camilleri who was already mathematically eliminated before this match. In his last match in the group, he lost 3-0 to Zhan Laushman of Bulgaria.