2014 World Championship (the final) - O'Sullivan leads Selby after two sessions

Posing with the trophy

The reigning champion, Ronnie O’Sullivan has taken a comfortable lead of 5-3 after the end of the first session and extended it until 10-7 after the second one, over the Jester from Leicester, Mark Selby.

It hasn't been a classic cue battle between these two masters of the green baize, but somehow they managed to keep us glued to our TV screens until almost 11pm .... although sometimes it was quite boring and scrappy and didn't resemblance a final.

Everything started on a very good note for the master O'Sullivan who used runs of 59, 37 and 102 to practically fly at 3-0 and leave Selby behind. It was just the beginning of the show but one couldn't have that déjà-vu feeling from this year's Masters tournament when Ronnie played strategically and brilliantly well to defeat the same opponent.

Ronnie takes the lead

However, Selby found the strength to pull back two frames in a row with just a top break of 37. It was 3-2.

One more frame entered into Ronnie's pocket as the Essex-man used an efficient break of 63, before Selby tried to comeback into the match. 

A scrappy 7^th frame in which O'Sullivan gave no less than 12 points in penalty went Selby's way, but the last one of the session was captured on the colours by the current world champion. So, 5-3 after the first session. Not to shabby!

The fluency of the game dropped dramatically during the second session and even if O'Sullivan forced an incredible attack to winning the first three frames (using munitions of 40, 52 and 63) and left Selby in need of a snooker or more each time, the rhythm of the match was shown down and many mistakes were made by both players.

Selby nowhere near as attacking as in the semis

As in the previous session, Selby captured two consecutive frames managing to raise the bar and hitting a 55 break (his highest up until that moment was 38) to get the first, the second through being quite a dramatic and endless battle of cues that had it all: misses, free balls, penalty points, re-rack and ending with a 29 clearance for Selby to trail 8-5.

After such a tormented frame it was no wonder that the Rocket needed to spice things up a bit, so in his own characteristic manner he fired in breaks of 131 and 87 to go 10-5 ahead.

Perhaps inspired by his attitude Selby started to speed up his cueing, breaks of 58 and 62 reducing the gap at just three points, 10-7.

The battle continues today from 2pm and if O'Sullivan doesn't decide to skip the next session we shall see the boys returning from 7pm tonight.