A Higgins v. Gilbert Daqing Final

After a week of tremendous matches, the time has come to bring on the very top of the top players in the grand finale and this year's International Championship final is going to be played by John Higgins and David Gilbert.

Higgins had a pretty amazing run throughout this tournament, many have whispered "vintage Higgins" is on again, so the semi-final against Mark Selby, although not easy, was a clear victory of 9-4.  

Breaks of 54 and 101 were sure to give the Scotsman a strong advantage of 3-0 and despite Selby's breaking the ice in frame four, Higgins used runs of 87 and 58 to go 5-1. This was pretty intense even for the beginning of the match.

Selby did pull back two consecutive frames in order to keep his hopes of a comeback pretty much alive, but when his opponent stroke in breaks of 64 and 54 to go 8-3 up all turned into a pretty messy and difficult affair.

Still, the world number one is known as a master of comebacks so when he mastered a 79 break to reduce his deficit at four frames, fans were hoping for a turn of tables.

However, a missed yellow with the rest down on frame 13 proved quite costly, this landing Higgins the chance to cruise to a well-deserved 9-4 victory.

So, after winning the Welsh Open and the Australian Goldfields Open this year, the "Wizard of Wishaw" is in for a good chance to get some silverware under his belt and level Steve Davis on ranking titles captured as a pro.

Things won't be easy though, as his opponent, David Gilbert is so very eager to get his hands on his first ranking title and we've only just witnessed Kyren Wilson doing it just a month ago at the Shanghai Masters.

Gilbert won 9-5 over Thai Thepchaiya Un-Nooh although the first part of the match proved to be quite a balanced snooker love affair.

That is until David went on to take lead 5-3 thanks to a top break of 83 and extend that lead at 8-3 (sustained by a considerable ton of 112 points).

Un-Nooh managed to prolong the suspense and added to more frames to his poor collection, but it was Gilbert who made the most of a scrappy last frame in order to book himself a place in the final.

So, without any further ado I'll just say this: it seems we are going to have a pretty intense final on our hands, so be sure to watch it tomorrow! No excuses!