James Wattana raised the roof at the Ambassador Hotel in Bangkok last night with a spirited fight-back in front of his legion of home town supporters.

Thailand's favourite sporting son turned potential defeat into a 5-3 victory over England's Bradley Jones in the last 32 of the £295,000 Thailand Masters.

Yet for long periods Wattana, a popular winner of the tournament in both 1994 and 1995, looked destined to make an early exit.

When world number 44 Jones led 3-1 at the mid-session interval Wattana was in danger of suffering an identical fate to his opening-match disaster at the Bangkok-hosted Asian Games in December.

But Jones jawed a simple brown and a straightforward blue to the same baulk pocket when on the verge of moving 4-1 ahead and Wattana grabbed his lifeline with both hands.

He cleared blue to black to trail only 3-2 and really began to motor when he drew level at 3-3 thanks to a magnificent 132 total clearance. After that it was one-way traffic as Wattana sailed through what proved to be the closing two frames.

Peter Ebdon's overriding emotion was relief after producing a great escape to squeeze past Paul Hunter 5-4 on the final black.

World number seven Ebdon trailed 64-0 in the decider but when Hunter narrowly missed a red using the rest he pounced with a 65 clearance. Northern Ireland's Joe Swail, who was 3-1 down at the mid-session interval, came back strongly to take the next four frames to edge out Anthony Hamilton 5-3.