Maintaining his good form, National champion Pankaj Advani scored a fluent 4-0 victory over Albert Kenny of Ireland to top his group with an all-win record in the IBSF World Under-21 snooker championship in Taupo, New Zealand, on Wednesday.
At the conclusion of the league, Advani was seeded No.1 for the knock-out stage, ahead of defending champion Ding Junghui of China, who is seeded at No.5.
Both are in the same half of the draw that was released soon after the league stage was completed.
Joining Advani in the knock-out phase was fellow-Indian Aditya Mehta, who, despite losing his concluding league fixture 1-4 to Mark Allen of Northern Ireland, finished third in the group to qualify for the Round of 32 where matches will be played over best-of-nine frames.
Sourav Kothari, the third Indian in the fray, finished his league campaign on a winning note with a 4-1 result against Germany's Patrick Einsle. However, having lost four of his seven matches, the 18-year-old from Kolkata ended fifth in the group and failed to qualify for the knock-out phase.
The 64 players were divided into eight groups for the preliminary league. The top four from each group qualified for the knock-out stage of the championship.
The 18-year-old Advani, from Bangalore, had runs of 61 and 59 while drubbing Kenny 69-11, 74-37, 71-23,60-1.
Incidentally, Advani is one of only two players -- the other being Mark Allen -- to have won all the league matches.
Though he did not record a century break, consistency has been his watch-word as he went through the six matches dropping just two frames. His best break, so far, was a 90 against Nisar Ahmed Saif of Bahrain yesterday.
The 17-year old Mehta, from Mumbai, found Allen in top gear as the Irish player knocked in two solid breaks of 75 and 51 en route to a comfortable victory.
Mehta thus finished third in his group with five wins and two defeats, while Allen, with a cent per cent record emerged on top.
Advani is scheduled to meet Michael Lupton of Australia while Ding meets Nisar Ahmed Saif of Qatar in the first round of the knock-out stage.
Mehta, too, has been placed in the top half of the draw and meets James Delahunty of Australia, in the opening round.
Mark Allen is seeded at No.2 with Jonathan Vaughan of Wales at 3 and Brendan Donoghue of Ireland at 4.
The concluding day of the league stage witnessed the tournament's highest break thus far, a 140 by Adam Davies of England during his 4-0 rout of Kenwyn Lord of Fiji.
