Match Reports from the 888.com World Championship
Higgins gets one hand on trophy
John Higgins 12 – 4 Mark Selby
A clinical John Higgins won seven frames in a row to leave Mark Selby praying for an historic comeback.
The Scot also took the last three to establish an almost insurmountable lead as he heaped pressure on an overawed and luckless Selby.
After both players won superb semi-finals, the showpiece perhaps inevitably began slowly. The opening three frames were poor, and took 89 minutes to complete.
The high break of the period was a 38 by Selby to get him on the board in the third.
That settled the 23-year-old, and the match finally got going when he made a break of 67 to draw level at 2-2. It got even better for him after the interval when he took his third frame in a row with a 116 to take the lead.
The break was his tenth century of an incredible tournament for the world number 28, but after that it was all Higgins.
The ‘Wizard of Wishaw’ responded with a 97 to take the sixth frame, and picked up the next two in multiple visits to finish the first session 5-3 ahead.
Before the match started, Selby, in his first world final, would probably have taken that scoreline.
The slow play at the beginning meant that there was only just over an hour between the two sessions.
After the short interlude the more experienced Higgins, in his third final, came back in at the top of his game. When the players come to analyse where the match was won and lost, they may both point to a 35-minute spell at the beginning of the second session.
In that time Higgins made breaks of 75, 70 and 100 to move from 5-3 to 8-3 in a flash. Selby was not allowed any time to settle, and so when he did get some time at the table, as he did in the 11th frame, he was unable to make a sizeable contribution.
As is so often the case, the player on top enjoyed the run of the balls. In a scrappy 12th frame, Selby could not punish Higgins going in-off, and the 1998 champion fluked the last red to come from behind and win his seventh frame in a row on the last black.
A break of 58 put him in charge of frame 13, but Selby finally stopped the rot with two medium-sized breaks and some good safety.
That made the score 9-4 with three frames to play. To give himself a chance on the final day he desperately needed to stay in contention by winning two of them.
Unfortunately for him, Selby could not play with the same freedom that had swept him past Stephen Lee, Peter Ebdon, Ali Carter and Shaun Murphy to get to the final.
His long game, such a key reason for his success, deserted him and he paid the price.
Higgins played well, but even when he missed – as he did twice in frame 14 – he was not punished.
A loose safety gave him an opportunity in the penultimate frame of the day, and next year’s number one made 53. Selby tip-toed his way back, but everything was a struggle for him. He had five scoring visits in the frame but could only muster 46 points.
Good safety from Higgins brought a concession, and his tenth century of a fairytale tournament saw him lead 12-4 overnight.
No one in Crucible history has ever come back from so far behind after the first day. Selby has made a habit of gutsy comebacks over the past two weeks, but it would take something seismic to prevent John Higgins getting his name on the trophy for the second time at some point today.
