Alex Borg will be playing John Whitty in today’s last 32 match.

Duncan Bezzina and Alex Borg are the two Maltese cueists left in the European Championship for men, currently under way in Zielona Gora, Poland, following the elimination of Mario Brincat from the last 48 stage, yesterday.

Borg earned the right to skip the first knock-out round following his perfect score in Group M but Bezzina had to contend with Austria’s Paul Schopf to prolong his stay in the tournament by another day.

Brincat, who qualified after finishing third in Group B, looked to have done enough to see off 16-year-old Estonian Andres Petrov after opening a 3-2 lead.

However, Petrov won the last two frames to wrap up a 4-3 win and a match against England’s Jeff Cundy today.

Bezzina was 0-2 down against Schopf but the Malta champion regrouped and won the next four frames in a row.

Today, he plays Maurice Le Duc, of the Netherlands, for a place among the top 16 players.

Last week, Borg was in formidable form in the qualifying phase, winning all his five matches and finishing with a +17 frame difference.

That record earned the two-time European champion an entry in the last 32.

He will be in action today when playing England’s John Whitty who yesterday beat Roey Fer-nandez, of Israel, 4-0.

In the group stage, Borg had breaks of 104, 90, 79, 64, 63, 62 and 56 on his way to victories over Simonas Dragunas (4-0), Jaroslaw Kowalski (4-1), Tom Zimmer-mann (4-0), Bernard Bernardsson (4-0) and runner-up Gareth Allen (4-2).

Meanwhile, Roberta Cutajar booked her place in the last 16 of the women’s tournament after rounding up her group matches with a 3-0 win over Nastya Toumi-lovitch, yesterday.

Cutajar, a quarter-finalist at last year’s world championship in Bulgaria, finished third in Group B behind Belgium’s Wendy Jans (six wins) and Russian Irina Gorbataya (five wins).

The Maltese cueist won four matches from six and plays Diana Stateczny today for a place in the quarter-final. The German was runner-up in Group A with only one loss from six matches.

At the start, there were 28 players in the tournament. They were divided into four sections of seven players each.