China Open 2011 qualifiers - Day 2

07:01:00 Ramona Dragomir 0 Comments

Kurt Maflin is continuing his good run
A very interesting day here in Sheffield, as the Chinese gang is left with only one (out of three) player (Liang Wenbo is yet to perform on Sunday, so things may change), while the Thai team kept all of its remaining players (two, to be more precise) in the run for China Open main event.
The scores for the second day of the qualifying rounds aren’t very different from those registered in the first day, still the first whitewashes were performed, as well as some very nice surprises. ;-)


Anda Zhang was the first to open the day, meeting up with Alfie Burden at Table 1, match that ended with Zhang`s being hammered 5-1 by Alfie, while on Table 3, Xiao Guodong was being defeated 5-2 by Joe Jorgia. The only Chinese that won his match yesterday was Liu Song, him also performing the first whitewash of this competition as he won 5-0 over Adrian Gunnell. Later on, his namesake, Liu Chuang was going to be eliminated by "The Whirlwind" Jimmy White with a 5-3 final result.
The Thai team worked up very good, as Issara Kachaiwong defeated Andy Hicks 5-1, the next to follow, being James Wattana who won 5-2 over his opponent, Stuart Pettman.


Jack Lisowski
Kurt Maflin, the one who beat Simon Bedford the other day, had a very difficult match with Jack Lisowski, a match where top class snooker was played and lots of sparks were noticed. Actually it was the first match of this year’s China Open qualifiers that saw no more than four century breaks (two made by Kurt and two by Jack). That tells you how good it was!

The boys weren’t separated by more than one frame, the one who opened the score being Kurt. Jack leveled up very quickly by hitting a marvelous 116 break, Kurt replayed by taking the next frame, but Jack hit back with an 106 to catch with him again. At 2-2, Kurt took the lead, once more, as he hit his first century break (115), but as usual Jack pulled one back and also won another one, this putting him in fort for the first time. That 7th frame was such a tight one, Lisowski winning it just by being seven points ahead of Maflin. However, Kurt leveled up by performing a beautiful 140 (the biggest break od this competition, until this moment) and also won the decider by hitting a 76 break to end in full glory. Brilliant match! :-)


Nice to see Belgium’s man, Bjorn Haneveer wining his first match (haven’t see that in a while now), as he beat Kuldesh Johal 5-3; also another player that’s doing a very good job in the qualifying rounds is Ben Woollaston, the Englishman that hit the first century break of this competition in the first day, while yesterday totally and utterly crashed the Scot Anthony McGill 5-0.


Couch and Davison keps us awake
Matthew Couch and Paul Davis were going to makes us watch the live scoring system way too much :-)) They finished their battle last and as you’ve already guessed it was a very tight and tiring one (decider and all). Although Davison rushed in to take the lead 2-0 over his opponent, Matt wasn’t going to give up so easily, so he won one frame at a time to level the score and even go up in front, after cashing the 5th frame just by three points ahead (69-66). It was 3-2, in favor of Matt, but he wasn’t comfortable enough to have just one frame advantage, so he won one more to go 4-2 and be just one glance away from the next round. But the Scotsman fought back and did it in style, bringing the match to a decider, a terrible effort by his part, that wasn’t unfortunately fully rewarded as Matthew won the battle 5-4. Anyway, boy players should receive our congratulations as this was a hard match.


Century breaks for the second day: David Gilbert (101), Jack Lisowski (106,116), Kurt Maflin (115, 140), Stuart Pettman (136) and Jimmy Robertson (138).


The complete list of results for the second are:
Alfie Burden 5 - 1 Zhang Anda
Adrian Gunnell 0 - 5 Liu Song
Joe Jogia 5 - 2 Xiao Guodong
Jack Lisowski 4 - 5 Kurt Maflin
Jimmy Robertson 3 - 5 Joe Delaney
Barry Pinches 5 - 3 Liam Highfield
Ian McCulloch 0 - 5 David Gilbert
Jimmy White 5 - 3 Liu Chuang
Bjorn Haneveer 5 - 3 Kuldesh Johal
Jamie Jones 2 - 5 James McBain
Andy Hicks 1 - 5 Issara Kachaiwong
Rod Lawler 5 - 1 Kyren Wilson
Stuart Pettman 2 - 5 James Wattana
Anthony McGill 0 - 5 Ben Woollaston
Matthew Couch 5 - 4 Paul Davison
Joe Swail 5 - 3 Michael White


Today`s matches:


10am
33. Matthew Selt v. Alfie Burden
34. Tom Ford v. Liu Song
35. Anthony Hamilton v. Joe Jogia
36. Dave Harold v. Kurt Maflin
37. Mark Joyce v. Joe Delaney
38. Rory McLeod v. Barry Pinches


2.30pm
39. Robert Milkins v. David Gilbert
40. Peter Lines v. Jimmy White
41. Nigel Bond v. Bjorn Haneveer
42. Mike Dunn v. James McBain
43. Tony Drago v. Issara Kachaiwong


7pm
44. Michael Holt v. Rod Lawler
45. Steve Davis v. James Wattana
46. Jamie Burnett v. Ben Woollaston
47. Fergal O'Brien v. Matthew Couch
48. Alan McManus v. Joe Swail
*all hours are UK time


I remind you that this being the qualifiers we don’t have the possibility to watch the boys, so NO live streaming, However we have the live scoring system that’s available here and this blog to keep you in touch with snooker ;-)


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