International Championship - Day 4

Peter Ebdon impressed in his last 16 match, beating Stephen
Maguire 6-1

Teenager Lu Haotian continues to grab the headlines at the International Championship after upstaging Dominic Dale on Wednesday afternoon. Lu had already beaten Michael White in the Wildcard Round and received a bye into the last 16 due to Ronnie O’Sullivan’s withdrawal but he trailed 3-1 going into the interval against Dale. He fought back to 3-3 and the next four frames were shared, forcing a final frame decider. The 14-year-old took advantage from a foul from The Spaceman in the closing stages of the frame and knocked in blue and pink to become the youngest player to play in the quarter-finals of a major ranking event.

He will face Neil Robertson who defeated Matthew Stevens 6-2. He also led 3-1 at the interval and managed to keep Stevens at arm’s length to progress. Another shock result came through veteran Peter Ebdon who outclassed Stephen Maguire 6-1 with a high break of 89.

The other afternoon match between Mark Davis and Marco Fu had to be suspended with Fu 5-4 up because it was going to over-run into the evening session. The players returned later on in the evening with Davis needing to claim the last two frames to secure an elusive place in the top 16 thus securing a spot at next January’s Masters and automatic qualification to the UK Championship. However, Fu knocked in a sizable break in the tenth frame leaving Davis needing a snooker. However he missed a thin black giving him a huge deficit to make up so conceded the match.

Judd Trump cruised through his last 16 match with a 6-0 win over Aditya Mehta. The Indian player had defeated Stuart Bingham yesterday but looked at unease in front of the TV cameras allowing Trump to play some of his own brand of ‘Naughty Snooker’ and wrap up an easy win.

Local favourite Ding Junhui was knocked out of the tournament, losing 6-4 to Shaun Murphy. Murphy dominated the opening encounters and led 3-1 at the interval, extending the lead to 4-1 in frame five. Ding mounted a comeback though and won three in a row to draw level but Murphy’s 108 break in the ninth showed he was still calm and wrapped up the match by winning frame ten.

Mark Allen met Cao Yupeng for the first time since branding him a cheat at last season’s World Championship, stating he had not owned up to a foul in the match. Cao won on that occasion but the Northern Irishman gained revenge, recording a comfortable 6-2 win, setting up a quarter-final meeting with Trump.

The last remaining second round match was nothing short of a marathon, lasting almost six hours from start to completion. The game saw Ricky Walden upstage the world number one Mark Selby 6-3. Walden was in hot form in the early stages, winning all four of the opening frames. Selby won the next two after the interval but the seventh was won by Walden to put him 5-2 up. Selby once again narrowed the lead to 5-3 but at almost 1:30am Chinese time, Walden secured the ninth frame to wrap up the match.