A major upset happened on Day 3 of the ongoing 2023 Joy Heyball Masters Qualifier as one of Snooker and Pool Players Alliance (SPPA) top ranked players, Abiodun Christopher (also known as Emiratae) defeated former National Snooker Champion Wale Osomo in a top of the bunch game which ended 5–3.
A titanic battle was foretold as Osomo (also known as Prof ) and Christopher were drawn into group B at the tournament hosted at the Nicon Recreational Centre, Lekki, Lagos.
Osomo took an early lead by winning the first two racks before Christopher achieved a major come back by winning the next three racks in the race to five challenge.
At 3-2 , Osomo took the game six rack before losing the rack seven and eight for the match to end 5–3 in favour of Christopher.
Earlier in the day Christopher had to dig into his bag of experience to survive the scare of a defeat in his match against Sunday Ekundayo which ended 5–4 in his favour.
Despite Christopher winning his the first rack, Ekundayo was clearly not intimidated by his status in the sport, so he took the fight to him which resulted in three straight wins for the young lad in racks 4, 5 and 6.
Christopher being the only Nigeria based player to be exposed to international Heyball experience dug deep to win the last three racks of the game.
In the post match chat with asentv.tv , Christopher, whose wife was part of the spectators, said his performance proved that he is the player to beat. “My victory is a prove of my ranking as one of the Top players in the SPPA circuit and I just justified it”, he said .
With the two victories, Christopher now tops group B with two points.
The first match of the day between Ekundayo and Adebayo Adekunle was a keenly contested battle which ended 5-4 in Sunday’s favour.
This results keeps the group which is tagged as a “group of death” open to any of the 4 players to progress.
The qualifier ends with a final match between the two players in group A and B on Saturday at the Nicon Town Recreation Center, Lekki.
