World Championship qualifiers 2011 - Day 5

Joe Jogia wins over Joe Delaney

Half way through and the matches are beginning to become real crackers. It was a really gorgeous day for snooker and why wouldn’t have been? I mean we have had so many great names on the list, the standard is so high, Sheffield is the perfect host and God, we are talking about such a huge chance to get a place in this year’s World Championship! We had such an amazing day yesterday as the series of century breaks and awesome victories continued for those strong enough to handle the pressure - snooker is a tough sport, you know?!


The youngster Kyren Wilson hit a marvelous 95 to get the opening frame in the match played with Joe Swail and although the first session saw a tight battle 5-4, the evening was going to bring Kyren a beautiful victory in the form of a 10-6 scoreline.
James McBain took the led 6-3 after the first session against his opponent, Ian McCulloch and continued his good run during the second one, when he won by 10-5. Ian couldn’t do anything and not even that 122 break that he hit in frame 12 couldn’t change the fact that his run ended here.
As for Joe Jogia, the British player with some king of Indian roots, he passed the test of the other Joe of the competition - Joe Delaney - ending on a 7-2 result after their first encounter and on a final 10-4 their last session.

Wattana cashes another victory

The mighty Thai, James Wattana played extraordinary well yesterday as he beat Andy Hicks 10-2, after closing on an 8-1 result the morning session. Although this time James didn’t case a rain of century breaks, he played in order to win and he did it in the best possible way. Next stop is the match against Mike Dunn and that could be quite a surprising match if Mike’s gets in the mood for quality snooker...let’s remember his performance during the Shoot-Out event; and even though that was a time-limiedt competition his performance was extraordinary.
Another classic match of strengths and determination was the one between Alfie Burden and Sam Baird. Little Sammy-boy hit a series of 103 and 120 as to show his intentions of winning this match, the first session ending in his favor at 7-2. But the battle wasn’t over yet and Alfie was not going to let him get away with is so easily, so he made a spectacular comeback, he won 5 frames! The first two were cashed by Alfie, then Sam won the next two as to go one step closer to the victory 9-4, only to see Burden capturing the next three. It was 9-7 and chances for a full recovery were possible to happen, but Sam’s 69 break put an end to this battle.


If an award could be made for the most intense match, than Adrian Gunnell v. Liu Song will definitely be the winner. It was such a beautiful match and even if we didn’t have century breaks included, we had passion and ambition all put together.

Song sings better than Gunnell

Adrian took the opening frame with a break of 73, but Liu`s response was a more profound one as the little Chinese captured not more than three frames. No worries....Gunnell fought back and ended the first session in his favor 5-4. The evening wasn’t going to be any different, the tension being the main ingredient. Liu Song stormed in as to take over five frames on a row by hitting in runs of 52, 85 and another 52. He set the score at 9-5 and he was just one step away from meeting with Mark Joyce in the next round
Replaying with breaks of 74 and 59, Adrian started to win one frame at time in order to bring the match into a decider and what decider that one was! Lots of safety shots were played, more than one ball was missed, which is understandable considering the situation at hand, but in the end the last player standing was Liu. He won it fair and square.


Beside these six battles of cues we also have had four more matches with only one session completed, the scores being the following ones:


We have a busy day ahead of us as we need to know the winners of the group I’ve just presented you with above (the starting hour being 2:30pm), but also the ones taking part in the next matches:


10am (the first session) and 7pm (the last session)
*all hours are UK time


Fingers crossed for the boys and click here if you want to know the latest scores :-)