National snooker champion Alok Kumar and Yasin Merchant registered convincing victories to storm into the quarter-finals in the Asian Snooker Championship at Aqaba, Jordan, on Wednesday.
Alok, fresh from his exploits in the Asian Pool circuit, had no trouble in packing off Issara Kachaiwong of Thailand 4-1 (67-53, 53-13 90-35 24-76 64-42) while former Asian champion Merchant rallied superbly to get the better of Imran Shahzad of Pakistan by an identical margin.
Merchant lost the first frame 44-80 but came back strongly to overcome his opponent 122-1, 62-53, 76-14, 59-53 to make it to the last eight.
Alok will now take on Alex Puan Yi-Wei of Singapore while Merchant faces Habib Mahmood of Bahrain for a place in the semi-finals.