Kyren Wilson shrugged off a slow start to take a commanding lead over Lei Peifan at the end of the opening session of the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield.
Wilson, who is bidding to become the first first-time winner to retain his title at the Crucible, fired a break of 136 as he recovered from losing the first two frames to establish a 6-3 lead ahead of Saturday evening’s conclusion.
The so-called ‘Crucible Curse’ seemed to have struck Wilson in the opening stages, as a pair of missed blacks allowed Lei, who won the Scottish Open in December, to cruise into a 2-0 lead.
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But from the moment Lei failed to punish Wilson for another missed black in the third frame, the momentum started to shift, and the Chinese player served up far too many opportunities for Wilson to turn the tie around.
A break of 82 got Wilson off the mark and, after he won the next two to take the lead, a dismal safety from Lei let his opponent in for a 66 break and a two-frame advantage.
Lei had a chance to punish the champion further in the seventh but missed a red to the middle on 43, Wilson responding with back-to-back breaks of 82 and 136, before Lei stopped the rot to take the final frame of the morning session.
Mark Williams withstood a Chinese whirlwind to edge a 5-4 advantage over rising star Wu Yize in a match that is set to conclude on Sunday afternoon.
The three-time world champion eased into a 3-0 lead only for Wu, tipped as one of the game’s brightest prospects at the age of 21, to take the next four frames with a run of 466 unanswered points, book-ended by breaks of 120 and 136 in the fourth and seventh frames respectively.
Wu’s run was just 19 points short of the Crucible record established by John Higgins in 2000 – but it did not put off the gritty Welshman, who responded by taking the last two frames of the session, finishing with a break of 78 to leave it all to play for on Sunday.
Another former champion, 2010 winner Neil Robertson, is in real trouble after falling 7-2 behind in his match against qualifier Chris Wakelin.
Wakelin opened with a break of 108 and hit four further half-centuries as he threatened to overwhelm the Australian, returning to the Crucible after falling in qualifying for the first time last year.
Robertson dispatched a coolly taken century to reduce the arrears to 6-2, but Wakelin got the better of a 55-minute final frame of the day on the black to leave him in a commanding position for Sunday’s concluding frames.
Earlier, China’s 14th seed Xiao Guodong fired two centuries and four more breaks over 50 as he established a 7-2 overnight lead over Matthew Selt, who also compiled breaks of 106 and 131 in a high-quality contest.
