Bangalore, September 9: Pankaj Advani is on a roll. After annexing the points format crown last week, the 23-year-old Bangalore lad inched closer to repeating the feat when he edged past Geet Sethi 1269-1003 in the semi-final of the time format at the World Billiards Championship on Tuesday.

Except for a brief period early on, Advani held the upper hand throughout the match and will now take on Devendra Joshi in the title clash on Wednesday. Joshi put it across Rupesh Shah 1228-820 in the other semi-final.

In the four-hour semi-final, Advani displayed his classic touch, making canons and playing with red ball at the top table. Though he had just three century breaks, it was the variety of knocking and compilation of breaks that really set him apart from Sethi.

"Full credit to the young lad for performing consistently," said Sethi. The eight-time world champion played well in patches and could have turned the tables when he was 300-plus behind with 18 minutes remaining -Sethi had made some of the biggest breaks in this competition, but it simply was not his day.

"I thought I could have overcome the deficit at the end, but I missed badly," said Sethi. "I simply failed to maintain any consistency. Look at my breaks graph in the tournament, it kept on going down. First I had made the break of 885 in the first match, then 750, and then 400 and now I failed to catch Advani today though I could have done that. It's very frustrating," said Sethi.

And as Sethi, who generally never shows emotions, realised he was losing the game, he allowed himself to be human, breaking into a smile. "Today, I just cracked up. Not under pressure, but I thought my hand became heavy and I could not get the ball moving the way I wanted," he said of the narrow misses on the top table that halted his progress. "It was the same table and same balls I was playing with, but I could not do anything with it," he added.

Advani, on the other hand, couldn't hold back his joy. "When you know you are defending the title and when you come from 300 points down with less than 20 minutes remaining, it's special". Advani said he carried on his good form from the quarter-final win against Sourav Kothari. "But I never relaxed even though I had a 400-point lead with 20 minutes remaining," said Advani.

Results (semi-finals): Pankaj Advani (Ind) bt Geet Sethi (Ind) 1269 (161, 397, 67, 165, 92)-1003 (57, 182, 55, 61, 90, 151); Devendra Joshi (Ind) bt Rupesh Shah (Ind) 1228 (104, 224, 127, 53, 168, 126)-820 (103, 53, 69, 70, 91, 86, 92).