WC2002 Day 2 Round-Up

The end of day 2 in Cardiff sees us at the halfway mark of the group stages - all the players would prefer to be in the top half of their tables at this point. Top performer of the day was Ramil Gallego of the Phillipines, a Bristol qualifier, who whitewashed Chien-Te Chung and beat Welshman Wayne Lloyd 5-3. Lloyd is the only man to win a frame against Gallego so far!

Among the big names Efren Reyes has also won all four games - Stephan Cohen and Ryan Rampersaud were Reyes' cannon fodder today. In contrast to The Magician's chuckles at his own bad shots, Earl Strickland huffed and puffed his way through his TV game against Japan's no.1 Shintaro Sugaya, which he lost 5-1, although still doing well, having lost only that game. Francisco Bustamante also looks like cruising through the last 64, lying in 2nd place in his group after today being beaten by Thomas 'The Smiler' Engert of Germany but beating Englishman Anthony Ginn, who has failed to repeat the form he showed last year having lost all four games. Another Englishman who had a bad day was Daryl Peach, who was beaten 5-1 by snooker pro Tony Drago and 5-2 by Dimitri Jungo of Switzerland and is now bottom of his group.

Englishmen who fared better were Steve 'Romford Slim' Davis, having lost only one game out of four so far; the Knightrider Steve Knight won one and lost one to finish third in his group and Imran Majih beat English snooker ace Gary Ponting and Croatian Ivica Punik to finish second in his group behind Earl Strickland. The host country are still holding their own, with Mark Williams top of his group after beating Ching-shun Yang of the Chinese Taipei and losing to Rudolfo Luat of the Philippines, and Dominic Dale now sits in 4th place in his group, beating top American Jeremy Jones 5-3 and coming second to Tommy 'The Disher' Donlon.

You can see all the match results here and the group tables are here