Wilson battles back to secure place in last 16

Wor ld snooker championship runner-up Kyren Wilson recovered from an early deficit to beat Kurt Maflin 6-3 and reach the last 16 of the UK Championship.

A break of 70 in the opening frame helped Maflin into a 2-0 lead, but Wilson responded in brilliant fashion with backto-back breaks of 132 in Milton Keynes.

Further breaks of 54 and 62 helped Wilson reel off five frames in succession and although Ma f l i n stopped the rot with a run of 78 in the eighth frame, Wilson sealed victory with a break of 99.

“I felt like I played really well,” Wilson told the BBC.

“From 2-0 down I didn’t really do too much wrong. I had a bit of bad fortune in the second frame and just went on a bit of a scoring spree after that.

“To sort of punch Kurt the way I did, because he does that to a lot of players, yeah, I’m delighted with that performance.”

Two-time winner Mark Selby also had to come from behind to beat Hossein Vafaei 6-2 in an instantly forgettable contest.

A fluked blue and a break of 55 helped Vafaei into a 2-1 lead before Selby won a turgid fourth frame which

lasted more than an hour to get back on level terms at the mid-session interval.

Selby won the next two frames without conceding a point and took a lengthy seventh frame on the black before sealing victory with a break of 52.

The match between Jack Lisowski and Xu Si was far

more free- flowing and featured seven breaks over 50 as Lisowski ran out a 6-2 winner, while Joe Perry recovered from 5-2 down to beat Joe O’Connor 6-5.

Perry snatched the ninth frame after needing a snooker and won the last two with breaks of 71 and 73.

Kyren Wilson defeated Kurt Maflin 6-3 in Milton Keynes.