World Championship qualifiers 2011 - Day 1

Sam Baird in action

While our eyes were set on what was going on in Essex at the Snooker Championship League’s matches, the boys of snooker were playing back in Sheffield at the World Snooker Academy. And that happened because the World Championship qualifiers started yesterday and the first battles for those 16 places up for grabs kicked off.
I’m not going to tell you about how important these qualifying rounds are, because if I’m talking about the World Championship, the biggest tournament snooker has ever seen, the situation is crystal clear, so with not much of an introduction here’s what happened during Day 1 ;-)


Sam Baird had a perfect start for he won his two matches, matches needed to qualify for Stage 2, where he is facing (as I write) the Lady of Snooker, Reanne Evans. He hammered Colin Mitchell 5-1 and ended on a 5-3 scoreline with Neil Selman to reach the stage where the first player to cash 10 frames wins a "trip" to Stage two second`s round.

Rowlings has a perfect start for the qualifiers

David Gray was to meet up with another David- David Singh and beat him in what was the first real tight match of the qualifiers. It ended on a decider, won by Gray who regained his strengths to whitewash Ali Bassiri 5-0. Following David’s footsteps Del Smith started his day with a 5-4 win over the veteran Tony Knowles only to end it with a beautiful crash over Stephen Ormerod 5-0.
Still no one succeeded to perform more whitewashes than Stephen Rowlings, who beat both Philip Minchin and Ian Stark 5-0 to earn his right as to play in Stage two, where he is fighting the mighty Jak Jones, as I write these lines. :-)


Here are the complete results for Day 1:


And here is today’s schedule (yes only two matches, but they are playing under "best of 19" rule!)


From 10pm (the first session) and from 4pm (the second final session)