1000 Mark Selby 6-3 Kurt Maflin
1430 Stephen Maguire 3-6 Anthony McGill
1430 John Higgins 6-3 Robert Milkins
Morning & afternoon round-up: Defending champion Mark Selby took a 6-3 lead over Kurt Maflin in the opening session of their best-of-19 World Championship first-round match.
The Leicester man, 31, won his maiden world title last year by beating Ronnie O'Sullivan, but no first-time winner has ever retained their crown.
In a high-class first session at the Crucible, Selby made a century - plus breaks of 84 and 69 - with Maflin compiling 96 on his debut.
They play to a finish from 19:00 BST.
Maflin, also 31, showed little sign of nerves and fought competently, striding around the table with confidence.
The Norwegian made three half-centuries in the session, but number one seed Selby had set the tone by making 84 in the first frame.
He won a crucial seventh frame on a re-spotted black and, after Maflin made 88 in the eighth, Selby nicked the last frame.
In the afternoon session, four-time champion John Higgins established a 6-3 lead over Robert Milkins, while Anthony McGill leads his fellow Scot Stephen Maguire by the same margin.
Marco Fu leads Jimmy Robertson 5-4 after their first session. They resume at 10:00 BST on Sunday.
1900 Ricky Walden 4-5 Graeme Dott
1900 Mark Selby 10-9 Kurt Maflin
Defending
champion Mark Selby survived a major scare to narrowly beat Kurt Maflin 10-9 in
the first round of the World Championship at the Crucible.
The world number one, 31, was on the brink of exiting against the battling Norweigian, ranked 38.
Selby made a century as he opened up a 6-3 lead after the first session.
Qualifier Maflin won five frames in a row in the final session to lead 9-8, but Selby forced a decider before taking the last to go through.
Maflin had to come through three rounds of qualifying to reach the main stage, and staged a remarkable comeback on his first appearance at the Sheffield venue.
Ultimately, Selby, who defeated Ronnie O'Sullivan in last year's final, kept his composure by winning the last two frames to scrape through.
It is only the first step to breaking the 'Curse of the Crucible' as no maiden winner has gone on to reclaim the trophy the following year.
That is not the only hoodoo Selby will need to overturn. He won the previous ranking event - the China Open - earlier this month, but has never achieved back-to-back majors, and despite winning six ranking titles in his career has not triumphed at the same event twice.
He began his tournament defence in impressive fashion, compiling 84 in the first frame, before further breaks of 108 and 69 put him in control.
Maflin was not overawed, though, making 96 - his highest break of the match - plus an 88 during the opening session.
At one stage in the final session he was 8-4 down as Selby made a superb 127 clearance, but showed incredible resilience against a player known for his toughness and drew the contest level at 8-8.
Remarkably, Maflin went ahead for the first time with the run of the ball on his side, but Selby forced the decider and held himself together in the last to progress.
No comments:
Post a Comment