Selby warned over slow play as Bingham leads

Mark Selby was warned for slow play as Stuart Bingham won four frames in succession to wrest control of their World Snooker Championship semi-final at the Crucible last night.

Referee Ben Williams intervened to tell Selby to “think about taking a stroke” after the three-time champion took more than three minutes deliberating during an extraordinary 19th frame.

Bingham had fired a 131 clearance to reduce the deficit to 9-8 in the first frame of the evening, then looked set for a maximum before missing a red to the middle on 96 as he levelled the scores.

The next frame developed into an epic safety battle, with Selby’s extensive deliberations prompting Williams to tell him: “This has been going on for over three minutes now, you do need to think about taking a stroke”.

It is not the first time Selby – pictured – has been criticised for slow play. At the Northern Ireland Open in 2019, he took six minutes to play one shot, longer than it took Ronnie O’sullivan to make his record-breaking maximum break in 1997.

Although Selby fluffed his subsequent safety shot, Bingham could not take advantage, and the frame drifted over the hour-mark before a fluked pink and another loose safety on the black by Selby enabled Bingham to make it three in a row.

Bingham, who appeared to be relishing the raucous Crucible atmosphere in sharp contrast to his stony-faced opponent, proceeded to fire a break of 78 to extend his lead to 11-9 with four frames of the evening session still to play.

Earlier, Shaun Murphy won the last two frames of the day against Kyren Wilson to give himself a glimmer of hope in his quest to reach his first Crucible final in six years.

A gutsy fightback from the 2005 champion reduced the arrears to 10-6.