Did you hear the one about…
An Englishman, Scotsman, Irishman and Welshman will battle it out in the semi-final of the 12Bet.com UK Championship in Telford for a place in Sunday’s final.
Shaun Murphy, John Higgins, Mark Allen and Mark Williams all won by the same score line in their respective quarter final matches.
Murphy saw off the challenge of Australia’s world champion Neil Robertson in a hard fought, high scoring encounter.
Robertson got off to the best start, winning the opening two frames but after Murphy levelled at the mid-session interval they shared the next ten frames with neither player ever more than the odd frame in front.
The pair were locked at 7-7 after Robertson had made a brace of century breaks only for the 2008 champion to respond with breaks of 93, 92, 75, 72 and 70.
Murphy edged ahead in the next and managed to break the deadlock, by winning a 44-minute 16th frame and book his semi-final spot.
John Higgins continued his impressive run of result since returning from a six month ban. He has now won 16 of his last 17 matches after ending the hopes of fellow Scot, Stephen Maguire.
Maguire, has regained the kind of form that took him to number two in the world rankings a couple of seasons ago.
Despite trailing the three-time world champion after the first session, won the first three frames of the second to take a one-frame lead including his second break of 137 in the tournament.
With his back to the wall, Higgins did what ‘champions’ do and produced three frames of virtually flawless snooker to move within one frame of victory.
Maguire answered with a break of 106 to cut the deficit but Higgins closed out the match in the next to set up a last four meeting with Mark Allen.
Mark King was delighted to see Allen earlier edge past Ronnie O’Sullivan’s conqueror, Stuart Bingham denying him a top-16 place for the first time in his career and leaving King clinging on to 16th spot for a little while longer.
The first six frames were shared after the Northern Irishman opened with a century break, before Allen claimed the last two of the session to lead 5-3.
Bingham came out in the night and won three of the first four levelling the scores at 6-6 with a superb 142 total clearance.
The next two were shared before Allen moved to within one match of his first major ranking final.
Wales’ Mark Williams ended the incredible six-match winning streak of Mark Joyce to reach his first UK semi-final since winning the title in 2002, despite the 27-year-old his home fans with the highest break of the tournament so far, a 143.
The two-time world champion made his highest break of the tournament so far (82) to seal a victory and afterwards said, “How am I in the semis playing like this?”
In his three matches, Williams has played 43 frames, winning 27 of them but making just 12 breaks of over 50.
The former world number one has some history of managing to get results even when he is not in top gear. In 1996, he won the Regal Welsh Open with a highest break of just 76.
With Murphy as his next opponent and either Allen or Higgins providing opposition in the final you would have to think that he will need to up his game and find some form in the break-building department to add the 2010 UK Championship to his impressive list of titles.
