Four Maltese players at World Junior Snooker Championship

This year’s edition of the World Snooker Championships of the World Snooker Federation (WSF) will be hosted in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, between Monday and Sunday, February 1.

The first part of the competition will feature the Junior Championship, which is open to those under 19 years of age.

Four Maltese players will participate in this junior championship.

Two teenagers who are among the top local juniors who are promising in this sport; 17-year-old Xavier Rizzo and 14-year-old Caiden Casha, and twin boys, Carl and Craig Casha, Caiden’s brothers, who are only nine-years-old.

Carl and Craig, along with English player Tommy Fallon, who is also nine-years-old, will be the youngest participants in this edition.

A total of 80 players from 20 different countries have registered for this Junior Championship.

On Sunday afternoon, the groups were drawn and the entrants  were divided into 16 groups (five in each group) so that the top two in each section qualify for the last 32 round, which will be played on a knockout format.

In the first phase, each player will play four games.

Xavier Rizzo was drawn in Group L along with Yashnai Parmar (16 yrs, England), Cristian Mihai Huszti (18, Romania), Kai Nam Pang (17, Hong Kong), and Axel Wysoczański (14, Poland).

Caiden Casha was put in Group B along with Wang Xinzhong (15yrs, China), Dylan Smith (18, England), Krzysztof Czapnik (15, Poland), and Nikita Bazilevics (18, Latvia).

Carl Casha will play in Group A along with Edward Jones (17yrs, England), Mikayel Nersisyan (14, Armenia), Christian Richter (17, Germany), and Jovan Kutlesic (14, Serbia).

Craig Casha will be in action in Group G along with Ayaan Iqbal (18yrs, Scotland), Adam Abbas (13, England), Alexandra Ceruta (15, Moldova), and Stefan Stachowiak (11, Poland).

Joseph Casha, the Casha brothers’ father, who is a local player and a snooker coach, is accompanying the small Maltese contingent.