Yan Bingtao becomes youngest ever World Champion
- Written by Vivek Pathak - Media Officer, IBSF
Yan Bingtao - China
IBSF Media
At the age of 14 usually it remains hard to win a Junior championship but Yan Bingtao of China registered himself into records of IBSF to become the youngest ever World Champion in snooker. He surpass his compatriot Zhou Yuelong who became the world champion at the age of 15 last year.
Yan Bingtao today lifted the 2014 SEAWAYS IBSF World Snooker trophy after defeating Muhammad Sajjad of Pakistan 8-7. As the score-line says, match was not so easy and had many fold till the end.
Initially it appeared that Yan will make his way easy but Sajjad was also not leaving any stone unturned. At the end of first session, Yan was leading by 2 frames (6-4) but when second session started, Sajjad rejected Yan's claim of winning 11th frame despite having a break of 60 points.
From there two more wins put Sajjad ahead on Yan (7-6) and it appeared that now Sajjad's victory is mere formality but it was not accepted to Yan and he flipped the side to win back to back two frames to become youngest ever world champion.
With this win, as usual, Yan also wins the ticket of Professional tour.
Yan's journey was not so easy. He reached the final defeating Kritsanut Lertsattayathorn (7-5) in Semis, World Champion in all formats, Pankaj Advani (6-4) in quarters and India's National 6Reds Champion, Varun Madan (5-1) in last-16 stage.
Defeating 12 times World Champion, Pankaj Advani and that too before his home crowd was ofcourse remained a huge task for Yan.