Sport

Hawkins and Wilson book semi-final spots at World Championship

Mark Allen’s Crucible run ends in heavy quarter-final defeat

Kyren Wilson on his way to winning his quarter-final match against Mark Allen at the World Championship at The Crucible in Sheffield. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA Wire

Wed May 2 2018 - 16:26

Barry Hawkins and Kyren Wilson booked their places in the last four of the World Championship with ruthless demolitions of their quarter-final opponents.

Hawkins thrashed third seed Ding Junhui 13-5 to set up a semi-final showdown with either Mark Williams or Ali Carter, while Wilson will face Judd Trump or John Higgins after beating Mark Allen 13-6.

Both men took an 11-5 lead into the final session at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield and Hawkins swiftly won the two frames he needed against a woefully out-of-sorts Ding, finishing the surprisingly one-sided contest in style with a break of 117.

And although Allen kept his hopes alive with breaks of 54 and 40 in the opening frame, Wilson took the next two to gain a measure of revenge for losing to the Northern Irishman in the final of The Masters in January.

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Hawkins, who has reached the semi-finals or better in five of the last six years, told the BBC: “I’m in the semis but there’s still such a long way to go and there’s still some great players in.

“I’m not getting too excited, I’ve been here before and I know what it’s like to go out there and play terrible, so it can happen at any time. I’m obviously over the moon to get through and I thought I played pretty well. I felt like he gave up at the end there.

“I thought I punished him every time he made a mistake and when someone’s doing that against you, it’s easy to start to missing a few and I managed to keep him under a bit of pressure because he hadn’t been until then. There’s a lot on his shoulders as well.”

Wilson, who had lost in the quarter-finals in each of the last two years, told the BBC: “I definitely wouldn’t say it was the biggest win of my career, [but] it’s up there. It was always a goal of mine to reach the one-table set-up and I just can’t wait to get out there and experience it.

“You have to sometimes seize on your opponent when you sense a little bit of weakness and I could feel that Mark was maybe struggling a little bit towards the end of last night, so every little mistake that he made I felt like I punished it and played really well.”

Earlier in the day, Higgins fought back from a four-frame deficit against Trump to head into this evening’s decisive session at 8-8.

Trump moved into a 7-3 lead thanks to a break of 89 in the ninth frame and by snatching the next on a re-spotted black following a brilliant clearance of 64.

But Higgins recovered his composure superbly to reel off five frames in succession with breaks of 65, 61, 53, 56 and 51, the Scot also enjoying an outrageous fluke when potting the green in getting out of a snooker in frame 14.

At 8-7 Higgins led for the first time in the match and Trump did well to win frame 16 and avoid falling further behind.

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