Author: chriscoumbe

Plymouth billiardist Steve Brookshaw made his third consecutive appearance at the World Billiards Championships in Leeds a memorable one last month, by beating his personal best performance. Brookshaw finished 11^th in the premier timed event, which started with 55 cueists from nine countries. He stunned the Indian contingent, firstly with a 645 – 337 win over Raj Kumar. This was followed by a superb 592 – 436 victory over Siddharth Parikh, who is ranked eighth in India and made two centuries in the two hour match. Further wins over Chris Taylor (England) and Josh Burns (Australia) enabled Brookshaw to top his group undefeated with a 101 break and an excellent average points difference of  203 in the two hour group stage matches.

In the last-32 Brookshaw defeated another Indian, Jaiveer Dhingra, in a close match by only 24 points. However, Dhingra’s teammate Devendra Joshi of Maharashtra proved unstoppable in the last-16, as he compiled breaks of 201, 180, 108, 100 and six other breaks over 50 in the three hour match. This was the Devon champion’s first appearance in the last-16 and came after his run to the last-32 of the 150-up event, held over the previous five days, where he was defeated 4-1 by the Asian champion Sourav Kothari.

Brookshaw’s performances at the Northern Snooker Centre lifts him to 21^st in the World Billiards Order of Merit, and he now focuses his attention on the next ranking event which takes place on December 6-7 at Bradford’s Cue Gardens club.