As we reported yesterday, one of the favorites for the world snooker championship – Judd Trump – looked like he was going out. Trump trailed the Chinese player Liang Wenbo was 3 frames to 6. Part of Wenbo’s lead was built up two highly impressive century breaks in the open in two frames: 117 and 107. While Trump doggedly levelled at 2-2 it was Wenbo who drew away to lead 3-6 overnight.
Resuming for the second session at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield it appeared as though Trump was going out of the tournament when Wenbo won the opening game to extend his lead to 7-3. At this point, Trump dug deep and won five consecutive frames to lead 8-7. The highlight of these was a break of 106 in the thirteenth frame. Wenbo won the next to level but then faded as Trump strongly closed out the match with breaks of 61 and 55. All told, Trump made eight breaks over 50 and his form simply got better and better. Despite the tight match, Trump looks good to progress far in the tournament.
There was one other match played to finish on day six. Here, in the tightest of matches, Kyren Wilson edged out the seeded Joe Perry 10-9. Perry had been 4-5 down at the end of the first session, and he remained one frame in arrears at 5-6 thanks to a break of 129 from Wilson.
The match proceeded to shift by one frame unit Wilson led 9-8. Here it appeared that Wilson, ranked number 19 in the world, would win 10-8. However, Perry, through a combination of match experience and carefully laid snookers, won the frame by 73 points to 59. The frame took 57 minutes to complete.
Clinching the marathon frame forced a decider. Here it looked, after some initial exchanges that Perry would win. Leading by 28 points to 8, Perry looked in prime position with the red balls open and the pink and black balls available. Perry potted the black but left the cue ball too close to a red ball. Having to play a safety shot and obviously frustrated, Perry then watched as Wilson laid a superb snooker. Clipping the red ball from distance, Wilson left the cue ball tight behind the green. With the reds open, Perry could do little other than to leave Wilson a pot on. Wilson proceeded to clinch the deciding frame by 77 points to 35.
There were two other matches in progress. These were the first of the second round matches between Marco Fu and Anthony McGill and Ali Carter and Alan McManus.
Fu leads McGill 5-3 and Carter leads McManus by the same score line. All second round matches are the best of 25 frames and require three playing sessions to complete.
With the matches so far, oddly McGill was more impressive than Fu and scored more heavily when in the balls. However, a few unexpected misses led to the English player trailing his opponent from Hong Kong overnight. This included Fu winning the eighth frame on the black.
With the other match, Carter made a 103 break in the third frame. McManus played well and the match reached 3-3, before Carter won the final two games of the session with breaks of 71 and 65.
