Crown Prince At World Pool Meet
By James Kon

Bandar Seri Begawan - His Royal Highness Prince Haji Al-Muhtadee Billah, the Crown Prince and Senior Minister in the Prime Minister's Office lost to Darren Appleton of England 8-3 in the 2006 Philippines World Pool Championship at the Philippine International Convention Centre (PICC) in Manila yesterday.

HRH the Crown Prince played in the second match of Group 10. In the first match of the group, 10"' seed Francisco Bustamante had trailed against fellow Filipino qualifier Jharome Pena 5-4 but battled back to take a thrilling 8-7 victory.

HRH the Crown Prince will now takeon Pena on Monday and Bustamante on Tuesday.

This is HRH the Crown Prince's first participation at the championship which gathers 128 world class players from 46 countries. The two top players from each group would proceed to the next round of the competition.

Earlier in the day, HRH the Crown Prince and Her Royal Highness Paduka Seri Pengiran Anak Isteri Pengiran Anak Sarah were greeted by Mr Ernesto Fajardo, President, Mr Yen Macabenta, Chairman, and Mr Julius Nidea, Secretary General of the Philippines Billiards-and Snooker National Congress upon arrival at the P1CC.

Accompanying Their Royal Highnesses to the event was Prince Abdul Qawi.

Meanwhile, Florida-based former Englishman Tony Crosby caused a huge shock on the opening day of the 2006 Philippines World Pool Championship when he edged out national hero Efren Reyes in an 8-7 thriller at the PICC in Manila yesterday.

In front of a highly enthusiastic 600-strong crowd, both players had chances to win it before Reyes missed a simple 9-ball to effectively hand the match to Crosby.

Itt was all Crosby for the majority of the match as 32-year-old Crosby built a handy 7-4 lead against an off-form `Bata'.

At 7-4 down, Reyes missed a simple black into the bottom left pocket leaving Crosby the 8 and 9 for a big upset. The American though missed a tight cut into the middle pocket and Reyes wrapped up the rack to take it to 5-7.

Crosby though, pulled off a top drawer shot in the next to clip the 1-ball in rail first and he then tied up Reyes in a tight snooker. Reyes escaped and Crosby lost the initiative as he left himself a hard shot on the blue 2. From there, the Filipino legend cleared to reduce the deficit to a single rack. Reyes broke and ran the next to take the match to hill-hill but there was more drama in the final rack as nerves got the better of Crosby.

He missed an orange 5 ball by inches and that left centre stage for Reyes to run out for victory in front of his adoring faithful but he missed the case 9-ball as the capacity crowd gasped in unison.

The 9-ball trundled toward the centre pocket leaving Crosby the simplest of shots for the shock of the tournament so far.

Earlier, American Rodney Morris had slumped to a stunning 8-2 shock defeat to on-form German Joern Kaplan while reigning champion Wu Chiaching made a perfect start to the defence of his title with an 8-0 triumph over Sven Pauritsch of Germany, while Chang Jung-ling beat Tony Fransson by the same score. -- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin

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