Kaylan Patel Into WSF Junior Championship Final

Leicester’s Kaylan Patel has reached the final of the 2025 WSF Junior Championship in Morocco and is now just one win from securing a two-year World Snooker Tour (WST) tour card.

The 16-year-old Englishman defeated China’s Zhou Jinhao 4-0 in Wednesday’s semi-final, scoring breaks of 57 and 55, to set up a final meeting with either Leone Crowley or Amaan Iqbal tomorrow afternoon. He is aiming to become only the second Englishman to win the WSF Junior Championship title after Stan Moody claimed the 2023 title in Sydney, Australia.

Patel, who finished eighth in this season’s English Junior Tour ranking list, has already secured his place in the 2025 World Snooker Championship qualifying rounds in April as a result of reaching the last four and can earn professional status for the first time in his career with a victory in the final.

A trio of group stage wins against Latvia’s Nikita Bazilevics (3-1), South Africa’s Marnitz Hawkes (3-2) and Poland’s Witold Bystrzycki (3-1) earned Patel a place in the knockout stages where he then overcame fellow countrymen Adam Abbas (4-1) and O’Shay Scott (4-1) to reach the last eight.

By the quarter-final stage, the hopes of English success in the Junior event rested on the shoulders of Patel as the sole remaining representative. He made a strong start to the best-of-seven frame contest against Wales’ Riley Powell, making a break of 78 en route to charging into a 3-0 lead.

Powell rallied, however, winning the next three frames to force a decider but Patel was able to hold his nerve and get over the line with a break of 50 before booking his place in the title match with a dominant success against Zhou.

The WSF Junior Championship final takes place on Thursday 23 January at 15:00 local time (GMT +1) and can be watched live on the WPBSA YouTube channel and WSF Facebook page.