WC2002 Last 64 Afternoon Update

At the half-way stage of the first day of the knockout phase, 15 players are through to the last 32 at the time of writing. Amazingly, the current world champion Mika Immonen isn't one of them, after a tense battle with American Shannon 'the Cannon' Daulton on the TV table which went all the way to 9-8. The first game on table 1 saw a big crowd for Welsh snooker man Mark Williams, but his progress in the tournament was cut short as he got trounced 9-1 by Dutchman Alex Lely.

Game of the day so far was the last TV match of the afternoon which saw the best breaker in the game Francisco Bustamante go head to head with Englighman Imran Majid, who is currently no. 4 on the UK Pro Tour. Bustamente won the lag, took his break and cleared up. The next few frames saw the odd bad shot from Busta and an unlucky break from Majid, before Majid scratched on the break at 4-3 down to leave Bustamante an easy run-out from which he never looked back, dishing 4 frames in a row to take the score to 8-3. Majid pulled a couple of frames back, but Bustamante had done enough - with the help of a fluke on the 4 in frame 14 he won the game comfortably 9-5.

Away from the TV table, another Englishman to go out was snooker star Gary Ponting, who met American cuemaster Earl Strickland this afternoon. Ponting found himself 4-1 down before Strickland left him an easy 1-2-9 combination shot, from which he managed a spirited comeback to level the score at 4-4. A few frames later, Strickland also pulled off a 3 ball combination on the 4 to pot the 9 and take the score to 6-4. At 7-5 down, Ponting played a great escape from a snooker on the 7 before throwing it by missing the 7 after Strickland's return safety. Earl golden-breaked the next frame to put him through to the last 32.

While Strickland and Ponting were fighting it out, on the table next to them Japan's no.1 Shintaro Sugaya was getting pasted by German Thorsten Hohmann - the game produced the first whitewash of the knockout stages, 9-0 to Hohmann. Efren Reyes won his game comfortably against Radislaw Babica 9-2, to end the Pole's campaign at the same stage he got to last year.

The other players to make it through to the last 32 so far are German Christian Reimering, who beat Spaniard Victor Tapies 9-1, New York based Puerto Rican Tony Robles beat Czech Roman Hybler by the same scoreline and Dutchman Rico Diks got the better of the impressive Russian Evgenji Stalev. Cory Deuel scraped through with a 9-8 win over fellow American Kim Davenport to join countryman Jeremy Jones in the last 32, while Okumura and Takenaka of Japan, Korean Sin-young Park, Ching-shun Yang of the Chinese Taipei make up the oriental contingent into the next round so far.