Yasin Merchant, Alok Kumar in final

Defending champion Yasin Merchant of Maharasthra and Alok Kumar of Punjab registered contrasting wins over their respevtive opponents in the semi-finals to set up a summit clash in the National snooker championship, in Madras, on Friday.

While Merchant blanked statemate Devendra Joshi 6-0, Alok Kumar quelled the challenge of Rupesh Shah of Gujarat 6-4 (63-22, 71-32, 56-48, 30-40, 9-107, 78-36, 66-35, 41-77, 35-70, 100-0.

In the process, Alok ran up the first century break of the tournament, in the tenth frame on his third visit.

Alok Kumar, incidentally, was leading 3-0 before Shah fought back to take the third and fifth frames. He had a break of 79 in his 19th visit in the fifth.

Shah started with a break of 36 on the first visit of the sixth frame but Alok replied with 58 and in his next visit cleared the table up to pink. Shah then managed to narrow the lead to 4-5, but in the tenth frame Alok was unstoppable.

In the tenth frame, Alok on his third visit, made a century, potting one yellow, seven blacks, five pinks and completed the tally with a blue.

The final will be a best-of-13 frame-affair.

Earlier, Merchant downed a lethargic Devendra Joshi 86-44, 61-20, 63-6, 60-7, 65-21, 67-39 in the first semi-final.