KARACHI, March 18: The 31st National snooker championship gets into action at Snooker Zone from Monday with country’s 48 best cueists vying for honours in the first ranking event of the year which carries a purse of Rs204,000.

Of them, 32 have come from qualifying rounds and were joined by country’s top 16 ranked players in the draw.

They have been equally drawn into eight groups and on completion of league, top two from each group would move to the knock out pre-quarterfinals being played on March 28. This will be followed by quarterfinals and pre-finals next day while the final is fixed for March 30.

Former world champion, Mohammad Yousuf, aspiring to win 14th title of his career, has been top seeded. Reigning national champion, Saleh Mohammad, is seeded second.

Other seeded players in the order are Naveen Perwani, Abu Saim, Atiq Latif Bux, Imran Shehzad, Khurram Agha and Shehram Changezi.

Records are true indicator to judge one’s performance. Despite quite a few failures, Yousuf has virtually monopolised the country’s premier snooker championship in his illustrious career so far.

He has captured 13 off the 18 titles in the last two decades since bagging the first crown in 1987.

Earlier in 1985, he lost the final to late Latif Amir Bux. His record of wins would be hard to emulate in the years to come.

The other five titles were won by Saleh (thrice), and Farhan Mirza (twice). No other player on the circuit has been able to win the national title.

Despite being off-colour last year, the 54-year old Yousuf has maintained his No 1 slot in the national ranking. His efforts to grab any of the four ranking tournaments besides the 9th KC Open went in vain.

No 2 seed, Saleh who recaptured the national crown after a lapse of six years in 2005, has assumed a role of coaching foreign teams to make both ends meet.

He has taken up a new assignment in Iran in the recent past. Earlier, he had been associated with Bahrain. He is expected to come for the nationals.

So fierce has been the competition amongst the top eight these days, that on a given day any player can beat the top seeds, says third seed, Naveen.

This is evident from the fact that Abu Saim handed out a 6-4 defeat to Yousuf in the final of Snooker Cup while the latter again went down 1-6 to Atiq in the final of 9th KC Open final.

Similarly, former Sindh Open champion, Kashif Khan, toppled Saleh 4-3 in the league match of last national before the latter eventually won the crown.

Monday’s fixtures:

At 10.00am: Kamran Razzak (Sindh) v Raja Rashid (Pun); Mohammad Sadiq (Pun) v Mohammad Hussain (NWFP); Shah Khan (NWFP) v Mohammad Ali (Bal); Abdul Rehman (Bal) v Syed Mesam Zaidi (Sindh) at 12.00pm: Kashif Khan (Sindh) v Tahir Rasheed (Pun); Asif Haris (Pun) v Hamid Bata (NWFP); Nauman Awan (NWFP) v Jan Ali (Bal); Mustafa Hyder (Bal) v Irfan Rasheed Khan (Sindh) at 2.00pm: Sohail Shehzad (Sindh) v Khalid (NWFP); Raees Khan (Pun) v Taj Mohammad (Bal); Inam-ur-Rehman (NWFP) v Jawed Ansari (Sindh); Minhas Malik (Pun) v Imran Qamar (Pun) at 4.00pm: Salman Shaikh (Sindh) v Arshad Siddiq (NWFP); Saqib Butt (Pun) v Mehmood Khan (Bal); Mohammad Asif (Pun) v Mohammad Akhlas (Sindh); M. Imtiaz Tipu (Pun) v Imran Khan (Pun).