National champion Pankaj Advani became the first player to complete a grand double by winning both the points format as well as the time format titles in the IBSF World Billiards championship at Qawra, Malta, on Sunday.
The 19-year-old, who won the points format title beating compatriot Devendra Joshi 6-2 in the final on Wednesday, showed that he had the patience and the skills to beat the best in the longer format as he got the better of former champion Geet Sethi 2242-1717 in a thrilling six-hour final.
This is only the second time that the time format and points format championships were held together and Advani created history by winning both the crowns.
In 2002 at Sydney, Australia, Ashok Shandilya, who Advani beat in the semifinals, had won the points format title while Mike Russel of England got the better of Sethi in the time format.
Advani is also the second cueist in the world to have won both the World billiards and snooker titles after Paul Mifsud of Malta.
While Mifsud won the snooker title in 1985, 86 and bagged the billiards crown in 1979, Advani clinched the snooker championship in 2003 in China. He also holds the Asian billiards crown.
For Sethi, who has won the amateur crown thrice and the professional title four times so far, this was a third successive defeat in the final of the IBSF World Championship.
Sethi, who bagged the title in 1985, 87 and 2001, had lost the summit clash in 2002 to Russel and then went down to Lee Lagan of England in the points format final in 2003 at Hyderabad. The championship was not held last year.
This is also the second win for Advani over his highly-rated opponent in a week as he had defeated the seven-time World champion in the quarterfinal of the points format after
twice coming from behind.
Advani began on a confident note in the final as he took a 616-546 lead in the opening two hours session but Sethi came back strongly to put pressure on his opponent with some useful breaks after the breather.
It was a battle of nerves thereafter as Advani once again proved that he has the ability to raise the bar under pressure as he compiled a break of 334 points to stretch his lead to 390
points around the half way mark.
But the experienced Sethi was not the one to give up and the 44-year-old pounced on an opportunity to come back to the table with a comfortable ball position and compiled a break of 157 and reduce the margin.
However, Advani had some different ideas as he registered an unfinished break of 155 to go into the second breather with a lead of 1374-1057.
Going into the final session, it was very important for the youngster to get a good start and he did precisely that as he opened up a 700 point lead within half an hour after the restart.
Advani then never looked back and proved to be a runaway winner though Sethi tried his best to come back in the match.
The tournament has been a fantastic outing for the seven-member Indian contingent as both the time format as well as the point format finals were all-Indian affairs and barring
Sourav Kothari -- who missed out in the time format -- everyone made it to the knock out stage.
In fact the Indian dominance in the time format was so clear that the semifinal line-up was almost similar to the one we could have in our national championship, with Advani taking on Ashok Shandilya and Sethi meeting Joshi for a berth in the final.
Though the seniors played their part to perfection in the event, rookies like Dhruv Sitwala and Kothari also showed that they have the potential to make it big on the world stage as they impressed one and all with their performance.
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