Stevens Attends Premier
Matthew Stevens ensured that he will be in the lucrative Premier League on Sky Sports later in the year by claiming the Championship League with a 301 final victory over Shaun Murphy at Crondon Park in Essex.
Despite two world final appearances and wins at both the Masters and UK Championship, many believe that Stevens has under achieved in his career. The ‘knockers’ would also have thought the Welshman had missed the boat with disappointing results sending him the wrong way on the world ranking list.
Stevens has proved his doubters wrong though, and over the course of the past two seasons, has become consistent if not spectacular, a base from which he now looks capable of finally achieving some of the outstanding goals.
Inspired by the return to the top by fellow-countryman and close friend, Mark Williams, Stevens is now a serious contender once again and after a confidence boost perhaps the ‘big one’ at Sheffield is coming at just the right time.
The Championship League began way back in January with the winners of seven groups battling it out for Premier status.
Stevens topped both Groups four and six, losing in the Play-Off stage of both and also survived a scare in Group five, needing to beat Ricky Walden to avoid relegation.
He finally made it through Group seven, earlier this week and headed straight into action with Williams, Mark Selby, Murphy, Allister Carter, Ryan Day, and Mark Allen.
Only Selby managed to get the better of an in-form Stevens who recorded 29 breaks over 50, including five centuries this week, leaving the Welsh-ace atop the league table with five wins from six matches.
Williams hit the highest break with his second 143 total clearance in a week after matching the break at last weekend’s PTC Grand Finals in Dublin.
Selby, Day and Allen missed out on play-off places, with Stevens in first place taking on fourth placed Williams leaving Murphy and Carter to settle the Wales versus England final.
Two breaks of 60-plus gave Stevens the advantage over the world number two, and despite a 70 from Williams reducing deficit, it was Stevens who booked his final berth with a 56.
Murphy and Carter shared the first four frames to head into a decider, and although Carter took the early lead, the 2005 world champion battled to get in front and win it on the colours.
That set up a repeat of the 2005 world final in which Murphy famously produced one of the best sessions in Crucible history to deny Stevens arguably his rightful place amongst the list of Crucible winners.
After playing fifteen matches in four days, the standard in the final failed to reach the heights of some of the earlier play, but it was Stevens who was the last-man standing and on this form will play a major part in the Premier League which breaks off in August.
