November 01, 2007	Thursday	Shawwal 19, 1428

MACAU, Oct 31: Pakistan snooker team wrapped up its campaign in the Macau Indoor Asian Games without fetching a single medal after its upset defeat at the hands of Iraq in the opening match of the team event on Wednesday at the Macau international Convention Centre.

Pakistan’s top cueists Khurram Agha and Naveen Perwani failed to make any impression at the singles event. Iraq took sweet revenge by winning first of the two singles frames against Naveen and Saiyam to establish their edge. Pakistan team gave a chance to Saiyam in the team event but he also failed to justify his presence.

In the best-of five frame encounter, Pakistan gained some relief in the presence of a big audience when Khurram and Naveen won the doubles frame to make it 1-2.

But Iraqi team dashed the hopes of the Pakistani team to stretch the contest to full length by cutting down a weaker challenge from Saiyam who was completely off coloured in the reserve singles frame.

Iraqi team gained an unassailable 3-1 lead to knock Pakistan out of the competition “It is an unbelievable loss, a shock defeat which we were not expecting at all. This is a rank bad performance from our team which did not play the tie with enough concentration,” said team manager Alamgir Sheikh while talking to newsmen.

He said they were expecting to win a bronze medal in the team event and were hoping to beat Iraq and Saudi Arabia to make a place in the last four but alas it did not happen.—APP