China News Service, Beijing, December 12 After 2 rounds of exciting and fierce battles, Chinese billiards star Ding Junhui narrowly defeated "Golden Left Hand" Mark Williams 11-2 on the morning of the 6nd Beijing time, and met with O'Sullivan, Trump and Hussein Wafai in the semifinals of the 5 Snooker British Championship. The other two Chinese players, Zhou Yuelong and Zhang Anda, both made it to the quarter-finals.
The 2023/1 finals of the 4 Snooker British Championship started on December 12, local time, and the three Chinese players who reached the quarterfinals appeared on the same day. Among them, Chinese snooker "first brother" Ding Junhui faced the world's No. 1 Mark Williams, and the two jointly presented a battle that was evenly matched and had the world's top level.
At the beginning of the game, the two sides did not give in to each other, and the score ranged from 2-2 to 3-3. In the seventh game, Ding Junhui overtook the score 4-3, and Williams equalized the score again in the eighth game (4-4). The eighth game, which lasted more than an hour, also set a record for the cumulative score of a single game of snooker. Williams defeated Ding Junhui 101-94 in this game, and the two sides accumulated 195 points, while the previous record of a single game total score was 192 points.
The two sides who regained their footing at the same starting point were still-for-tat, rewriting the score to a 5-5 draw. At the critical moment, Ding Junhui attacked calmly, scored 105 points in a single stroke, and narrowly defeated his opponent 6-5. In this game, Ding Junhui won 6 rounds and scored more than 70 points in a single stroke, of which 3 strokes exceeded <>.
However, in the first two matches of the day, China's Zhang Anda and Zhou Yuelong both stopped. As the only player in the Chinese team to enter the top 16 in the world rankings, Zhang Anda lost 4-6 to Iran's Hussein Vafi. Facing the "Rocket" O'Sullivan, who has been at the top of the world ranking for the past two seasons, Zhou Yuelong, ranked 26th in the world, lost reasonably, but the process was somewhat unexpected.
In the first 5 games of this game, O'Sullivan led 4-1. Just when the audience thought that "Rocket" would easily win, Zhou Yuelong launched a strong counterattack and took the lead to enter the match point 4-5 after winning four games in a row. Unfortunately, Zhou Yuelong fell short at the last minute and failed to achieve the super comeback that Chinese fans were hoping for. O'Sullivan won 4-6 to advance after two consecutive cities.
Despite stopping in the quarterfinals, Zhou Yuelong's performance in this British Championship was remarkable. After qualifying, he eliminated world No. 6 Neil Robertson 2-6 in the first round of the main event, and defeated his idol and world No. 1 Higgins 8-6 in the quarterfinals. In the face of O'Sullivan this time, he also fought to the last moment, which can be called a defeat but still honorable.
In another power-up match of the day, world No. 2 Judd Trump eliminated world No. 6 Mark Selby 3-5.
So far, the top four of the 2023 Snooker British Championship have all been produced. In the semifinals on the next match day, Ding Junhui will face Trump, and O'Sullivan will face Hussein Wafai. (ENDS)