Wuxi Classic 2011 - Day 1

19:03:00 Ramona Dragomir 0 Comments

Heeeeey! I've won!
The first day and what a better way to start this marathon of 18 days of snooker, than with a lot of surprises. What kind of surprises, you'll ask. Well, let's just say that while Yu Delu practically shocked the whole audience with his tight victory over Matthew Stevens, Stephen Maguire and Liang Wenbo were caught in one of the worst matches ever, for none of the players was at his best.


But first thing, first. Let's see how the morning session was; and here we have the matches: Peter Ebdon v. Rouzi Maimaiti and Matthew Stevens v. Yu Delu.
Incredible or not, I can't say that Ebdon's performance was a boring one, hitting two century breaks (113 and 107) having a strong saying in this and also the fact that he won the battle against China’s favorite wildcard, Rouzi Maimaiti 5-2. So, this is quite a good start for this John Malkovich of snooker. :-)


At a near table, something was happening and it was huge. With just a top break of 88 points, Yu Delu was taking the bull by his horns to lead the Welsh Dragon Stevens 4-2. 

Yu Delu kneels the Welsh Dragon
However, since the Dragon never falls asleep, he managed to level the match at 4-4 with runs of 96 and 72. Sadly for him, he couldn't repeat the performance during the next and last frame, so Yu Delu, practically a debutant in this tournament, got a spot for the quarter-finals.


The second session of the day was starring names like Stephen Maguire, who took on Liang Wenbo and Graeme Dott, who faced Cao Yupeng.
Now, I'm going to tell you the truth: Maguire is secretly named Maquire. Yep! It is true! At least, that's how they spell it on the screen, so they must be right, don't you think? Well, there's always the possibility that they are morons :-P Wouldn't be the first time :-P

MaQuire in action
I think that the fact they’ve misspelled his name created a bad Feng-Shui, so Maguire played incredibly bad. Really struggling, he almost obtained the victory over Liang Wenbo 5-2. And if we were to think about it, he could have finished that battle sooner, because he was leading 4-0, when Liang came back and hit a series of 67 and 40 to win his first frames. Hopefully, the Scotsman will be in a better form tomorrow, for he faces Ding Junhui.


Liang leaves the tournament
On the other hand, Graeme Dott seemed to be potting quite good. He had some kind of rough start, losing the first frame, but he succeeded to win the following four with breaks of 46 and 70. At 4-1, China's Cao Yupeng made a final effort and took the 6th frame with a break of 73, but Dott's 68, from the next one, concluded his victory at 5-2.


So, we are ready to play the quarter-finals and hopefully we shall see more action tomorrow ;-)
Here's the list of matches:


From 06:00
QF1 Shaun Murphy v. Peter Ebdon
QF4 Mark Selby v. Graeme Dott


From 12:30
QF2 Ali Carter v. Yu Delu
QF3 Ding Junhui v. Stephen Maguire
*all hours are UK time


TV coverage:
06:00 - 09:00 British EuroSport 2
14:15 - 15:30 British EuroSport 2
17:15 - 18:30 British EuroSport (the highlights)
20:45 - 21:45 British EuroSport (the highlights)

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