Ruthless duo secure places in semi-finals

BARRY Hawkins and Kyren Wilson yesterday booked their places in the last four of the Betfred World Championship with ruthless demolitions of their quarter-final opponents.

Hawkins thrashed third seed Ding Junhui 13-5 to set up a semi-final showdown with either Mark Williams or Ali Carter, while Wilson will face Judd Trump or John Higgins after beating Mark Allen 13-6.

Both men took an 11-5 lead into the final session at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield and Hawkins swiftly won the two frames he needed against a woefully out-ofsorts Ding, finishing the surprisingly one-sided contest in style with a break of 117.

And although Allen kept his hopes alive with breaks of 54 and 40 in the opening frame of the session, Wilson secured the next two to gain a measure of revenge for losing to the Northern Irishman in the final of The Masters in January.

Hawkins, who has reached the semi-finals or better in this competition in five of the last six years, told the BBC: “I’m in the semis but there’s still such a long way to go and there’s still some great players in.

“I’m not getting too excited, I’ve been here before and I know what it’s like to go out there and play terrible, so it can happen at any time.

“I’m obviously over the moon to get through and I thought I played pretty well. I felt like he gave up at the end there.

“I thought I punished him every time he made a mistake and when someone’s doing that against you, it’s easy to start to missing a few and I managed to keep him under a bit of pressure because he hadn’t been until then.

“There’s a lot on his shoulders as well.”

Wilson, who had lost in the quarter-finals in each of the last two years, told the BBC: “I definitely wouldn’t say that this was the biggest win of my career, [but] it’s up there.

“It was always a goal of mine to reach the one-table set-up and I just can’t wait to get out there and experience it.

“You have to sometimes seize on your opponent when you sense a little bit of weakness and I could feel that Mark was maybe struggling a little bit towards the end of last night.

“So every little mistake that he made I felt like I punished it and played really well.”