It’s been a long tournament. Sixteen match days completed and one to go. At the half-way point the marathon best of 35 frames match, Mark Selby (aged 32) holds a 10-7 lead over his Chinese opponent Ding Junhui (aged 29).
Selby’s lead is not as commanding as it was at the start of the match. Aided by breaks of 120, 91, 76 and 70, Selby went 6-0 ahead. In these early frames Ding appeared very nervous and his play was cautious. This wasn’t helped by Selby’s ability to score highly when the opportunity arose. Ding pulled two closely contested frames back to end the first session 2-6 in arrears.
In the second session Ding played much better. Although Selby won the first frame, a largely tactical battle 73 points to 22, Ding produced three big breaks to pull back to 5-7. The Chinese player compiled runs of 103, 89 and 76.
After the mid-session interval, Selby won the opening frame comfortably, by the score of 71-1. Undeterred Ding then produced breaks of 88 and 55 to close to 7-8. The last of these frames lasted 66 minutes. It was a slow affair, with unexpected misses on both sides.
At this point, Selby, not potting quite so well as he did earlier, played out two tactical frames to extend his lead to 10-7 overnight. The last frame was again tactical, although with a good standard of safety play. After 49-minutes Selby closed out the frame by potting the colors to the pink.
The match has not lived up to the excitement of the semi-finals and neither player has been able to dominate the run of play. So far there has been 7 hours and 40 minutes playing time.
The frame scores are (Ding first):
First session:
8-125 (91), 68-70 (DJ 52), 43-101 (76), 0-124 (120), 0-100 (70), 38-77, 68-47, 107-14
Second session:
22-73, 92-30 (76), 103-1 (103), 93-49 (89), 1-71, 86-0 (86), 82-52 (55), 25-86, 27-67
