Leeds: Devendra Joshi of India lost to Michael Pearson of Australia by 43 points in the group stage matches of World Billiards Championship which started at Northern Snooker Centre, Leeds, England on Thursday.

Pearson started well in the beginning and scoring breaks of 101 and 157, he got a good lead over Joshi. Joshi tried to recover but fallen short as no time left. Joshi, however, produced a break of 182 before bowing down to Pearson.

Meanwhile, David Causier (England) scored 926 points in 90 minutes registering breaks of 240, 155 and 145. He defeated Grant Meadley of Australia. On the other table, Pankaj produced another double century break (212 points). He scored total 874 points to defeat Martin Schmidt of Austria.
 

Peter Gilchrist of Singapore scored only 478 in 90 minutes, comparatively less but comfortable enough to win the match against Wayne Carey of New Zealand.

Eva Palmius (England) and Anna Lynch (Australia) had their matches against John Hartley (England) and Wayne Doyle (Ireland) respectively. Though they lost but both gave a good competitive fight to their opponents. Eva made a break of 40 in her total score of 222.
 

Player from England, Martin Goodwill, who reached into main round after playing qualification yesterday, defeated Alok Kumar with a comfortable margin. Though Martin had no big breaks but consistent breaks of 53, 73, 95 points helped him to defeat Alok.

The championship started at the Northern Snooker Centre in Leeds with a record entry of 65 players from 15 countries.