O’Sullivan sent crashing out by an amateur

now – after losing the final to Mark Selby in 2014 and plenty of other disappointments, it may be that O’Sullivan never triumphs in Sheffield again.

The 43-year-old (right), who had his hair radically chopped off mid-match, said: “Sportspeople perform brilliantly one day and then they don’t the next, it is the nature of sport.

“You can ask if I crumbled under the pressure, or say maybe my record suggests otherwise – I’ll leave that for others to decide.

“You can look at it two ways – that he came here and played brilliant, or that I left him easy chances. But all credit to him for holding himself together and finishing it off. There is disappointment, because you want a good run at the Crucible. But, if I had got through and felt like this in the next match, that wouldn’t have been much fun.”

For Cahill, though, a 23-year-old from Blackpool who fell off the tour in 2017, but is already back on next term, this was the greatest moment his career.

And it has come without the assistance of Hendry, who was formerly married to Cahill’s aunt – in the audience yesterday with the rest of his of family. Cahill, a 750-1 shot for the title last week, said: “I am here to win the tournament. I play every event to win – or I wouldn’t play.

“Why would you come and assume you will get beat, or what’s the point of playing? “Ronnie was under a lot of pressure out there himself, he doesn’t want to lose to me.

“You have to believe you can beat anyone, I have so much respect for Ronnie and he is my idol.

“But you can’t have too much respect or you can’t beat them, you need that belief. I just need to keep playing world No.1s!

“There was the win over Mark Selby at the UK Championship, and also Ding Junhui there in the past.

“And I won’t be losing against Stephen Maguire in the next round for the sake of being flat.

“That happened against Ding a few years ago, played the following day after a lot of interviews and couldn’t find anything the following day. But I learned from that.

“My coach Chris Henry has helped me to the next level.

“The main thing he helps me with is to think well and clearly out there – there is so much going on in the arena.”