Mumbai, April 9: Mumbai based snooker champion Aditya Mehta has won his first round match at the Betfred.com World Professional Snooker Championships at Sheffield against Andrew Pagget of Wales.

With this achievement, Aditya has become the first Indian snooker champion to win the match at the World Snooker Championships, in a decade. The 26-year-old Aditya trailed almost the entire match in the best of 19 format.

From 5-2 down, he finished the morning session strongly with breaks of 62 and 103 to close the gap to 5-4. In the evening session, Aditya trailed by a frame or 2 until 8-6.

But after that he won four consecutive frames to close out the match 10-8.

Aditya, whose current ranking is 82, needs three more wins to get to the Crucible.

"I am very happy to win the first round. It`s a big achievement for me. I look forward to continuing the good run and finishing the season on a positive note," said Aditya.

Aditya will play world no. 45 Xiao Guodong from China in his second match later on Monday.

Recently at the All India Invitation Snooker Tournament in Erode, Tamil Nadu, Aditya stole the limelight by winning the title. PTI