Naveen stuns Khurram to retain Latif Masters crown

KARACHI: Naveen Kumar Perwani came from behind in the final against top seeded Khurram Hussain Agha to retain the Latif Masters crown here at the Karachi Club on Tuesday.

Perwani, seeded sixth in the competition, had to bring all his expertise into play to outwit the rampaging Khurram who had entered the final of the 20th AKD Latif Masters Snooker Championship 2006 with a bang.

Khurram was easily the best cueist in the league matches, having topped the points table with an impressive aggregate of 38. Third seed Mohammad Yousuf and defending champion Perwani were tied at the second slot with 29 points each. Perwani reached the final only after defeating Yousuf in the one-frame tie-breaker.

Khurram was the obvious favourite when the best of seven frames final got underway at 5 pm. And he picked up from where he had left in the league matches running into a 2-0 lead rather quickly and there was a talk of the final becoming a one-sided affair.

Khurram was not far from moving into 3-0 advantage when Perwani fought back. It was an amazing turnaround in the fortunes of the game as Perwani started calling the shots and Khurram was at sea.

Perwani, who has been appointed Pakistan’s captain for the Asian Games later this year, recaptured his top form that seemed to have deserted him in the first half of the match. Once he was on song, Khurram faltered under pressure.

After clinching the fiercely contested third frame, Perwani fired a break of 91 in the fourth frame to level the match. He played with supreme confidence in the next couple of frames, reducing Khurram to the role of a mere spectator much to the amusement of the watching snooker fans and experts.

The final, lasting just over three hours, was won quite comfortably in the end by Perwani 4-2 with the frame scores of 25-66, 44-58, 66-55, 91-8, 79-22, 76-28.

Jamil Ahmed Sakrani, Senior Vice President, Pakistan Billiards & Snooker Association (PBSA), very

rightly pointed out that the Latif Masters has often seen the best of Naveen Perwani, who has been one of the top ranked cueists of the country for over a decade now.

The Latif Masters trophy brought smiles on the face of Perwani but Khurram had every reason to have felt disconsolate at having fallen at the last hurdle after having dominated the four-day event.