June 09, 2007	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 23, 1428

KARACHI, June 8: India will be the first foreign team to reach here on Saturday afternoon to feature in the 23rd Asian Snooker Championship which begins at a local hotel from Monday.

According to flight schedule, the two Indian cueists will be arriving separately. Former Asian champion Yasin Merchant will land by PK 275 at 3.30pm. He will be accompanied by manager-cum-coach Sanjay Sawant and referee Ajay Rastogi.

Alok Kumar will arrive half hour later by PK 273 along with delegate Ravinder Kishore Tandon and observer Amarjit Singh.

The Indians will be followed by two Korean players – Jung Tae-Hoon and Kim Do-Hoon who arrives at 10.15pm.

Also arriving on Saturday will be Bahrain. The flight GF 752 Q carrying two players, delegate, coach and a reporter will arrive at 11.30pm. They are Habib Sabah, Mohamed Al Shaikh (players), Salah Al Maraghi (delegate), Nicolas Baroo (coach) and Ahmed Karim (reporter).

Other foreign teams competing in the event arrives on Sunday, a day before the event.

Meanwhile, short training camp of Pakistan team concluded at the Karachi Club on Friday.

The PBSA will take control of the venue on Saturday night when it starts fixing five tables for the event.

The organisers have also finalised schedule of league matches. Best-of-seven frames 48 matches, equally spread over three days, will be played daily.

The pre quarter-finals and quarter-finals will be of best-of-nine frames while semi-finals will be of best-of-11 and final best-of-13 frames, respectively.