Updated 22:25
KEN DOHERTY’S RUN is over at the World Snooker Championship after Alan McManus defeated him 13-8 at The Crucible.
The 1997 champion was 4-3 behind going into this morning’s session and looked on the brink of going out as McManus won six consecutive frames. However, Doherty pulled two back to finish the session at 10-5 in the best of 25 match.
Doherty won the next two frames of the evening session to make it 10-7 before McManus answered back with a break of 67 to take the next frame. Resilient Doherty claimed the next frame but his Scottish opponent won the next 78-7. He then produced a break of 83 to clinch the match by a 13-8 scoreline and advance to the quarter finals.
Defending champion ‘Rocket’ O’Sullivan, meanwhile, produced some world class snooker to come from behind and reach the World Championship quarter-finals with a 13 frames to 11 victory over Joe Perry this afternoon.
The 38-year-old Englishman — bidding for a sixth world title at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England — had trailed 9-7 overnight and having shared the opening four frames of the final session O’Sullivan was just two frames from defeat.
However, suddenly the mercurial cuesman — whose brilliance has been offset by regular clashes with the sport’s authorities — found his touch and barely allowed Perry a look-in.
Breaks of 53 and then 52 were enough to level the match and then he upped the ante with a wonderful break of 124 to take the lead in the match for the first time.
Perry’s spark had completely gone and a loose safety shot by the 39-year-old Englishman in the 24th frame gave O’Sullivan his chance and he took it in style firing off a break of 113 to round off a remarkable sequence of frames.
O’Sullivan will play either Rickey Walden or another Englishman Barry Hawkins in the last eight. The Walden and Hawkins match, a rematch of last year’s semi-final which the latter won, will resume later on Saturday with Walden leading 9-7.
First posted at 14:21