Tuesday, November 07, 2006 Bata tops group despite bungling 9-ball anew
THE pool gods are again smiling on Efren “Bata” Reyes.
Two days after bungling a shot on the nine ball in his 7-8 loss to Tony Crosby, Reyes again miffed the nine in his final shot against Indonesian Roy Apancho but the Magician still came out the winner, 8-5, and topped his group.
The reason?
Apancho needed only five racks to move to the knockout stage and also missed the nine in the final rack. Before Reyes could take his shot, Apancho conceded the match, making Reyes’ miss moot.
Reyes’ win had him tied with Apancho and Crosby at two wins and one loss.
However, in the tiebreak system, Reyes got the number one spot after winning 23 racks, while Apancho is second with 21 racks and Crosby third with 20 racks.
“I still can’t believe I missed the nine during the first day, and I thought I would miss the nine again during the second match,” Reyes told Anthony Suntay in a pre match interview.
Champ advances
Defending champion Wu Chia Ching also moved to the next round after scoring his second win, 8-4, against Chan Keng Kwang in Group 1, along with Ramil Gallego, who already has two wins in Group 32.
In the other match, Brunei Prince Muhtadee Billah scored his first win after two matches by defeating Filipino Jharome Pena, 8-7. Pena bowed out of contention after absorbing his second defeat.
With a day left in the four-day elimination, five of the 21 Filipino cast have already been eliminated led by Pena, Roland Garcia, Eduardo Villanueva, Ronato Alcano and Antonio Lining, who have already succumbed to two defeatd.
Gandy Valle, Jose Parica and Santos Sambajon lost their first matches.
As of press time, 2004 winner Alex Pagulayan was still playing against China’s Li He-Wen, while 2002 runner-up Francisco “Django” Bustamante was facing England’s Dareen Appleton.
Meanwhile, Earl “The Pearl” Strickland is back to his temperamental ways, showing “unsportsmanlike” conduct in his 8-6 win over Chen Yeng-Chieh, who in turn has filed a protest against the American, according to a report posted at worldpoolchampionship.com:
Swearing
“A large crowd gathered around the outside table at the Philippines International Convention Center and Strickland certainly did not disappoint them. Highlights (of the match) included throwing his cue to the ground following every visit to the table, audibly swearing to the audience and threatening to hit his opponent over the head with his cue when Chen refused to shake hands at the end of the match,” the report said.
“Strickland's behaviour clearly affected his opponent and Chen signaled his displeasure by refusing the customary hand shake at the end of the match.”
However, according to one of the commentators, since the match has already been decided in favor of Strickland, he could not be punished retroactively.
“Strickland gets away again,” the commentator said.
Meanwhile, Reyes played flawlessly yesterday, and had only one error, aside from the final shot on the nine ball. Leading 5-2, Reyes tried to curve the cue ball towards the one but instead fouled, giving Apancho a chance to narrow the gap to 5-3. (ML/FCC)
