China’s Ding Junhui became the first player to reach the semi-finals of this year’s World Snooker Championship after thrashing Mark Williams 13-3 inside two sessions on Tuesday.
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The pair started the second session with Williams 6-2 behind.
The closest Trump came to Ding was when he scored his only century of the match to get back to 2-2 in the opening session.
McManus, at 45 the oldest man to make the last four at the Crucible since Ray Reardon in 1985, looked down and out as Ding took three of the first four frames to build an imposing 9-3 advantage.
A 123 break from Ding in the next frame battered those hopes, and the Chinese star dominated the next to claim his spot in the final, some 11 years after bursting onto the scene to win the 2005 China Open as a teenager. At 12-10, Fu looked in danger of losing another frame, but took on a hard long red, and was rewarded with a match-winning clearance.
“I’ve never thought these kind of days were totally gone in light of the fact that I can play I’m still truly devoted to the game”.
He now needs 11 of the last 25 frames to book a place in the final.
“He (Ding) played good but, in the first session, if I had my normal tip, I would have been in front”.
But breaks of 51 and 71 secured a superb 13-9 victory for Wilson, the world number 19, who will now go through to face world number one Mark Selby in the quarter-finals.
“With the players left in, it was probably my best chance to win the World Championship again and I felt really confident”.
“At one stage during my match against John Higgins the partition in the middle went up – sometimes you take a moment out there and at that point I did”, said McManus.
Marco Fu summoned the Crucible emergency services to rescue his Betfred World Championship title hopes after his cue tip dramatically fell off in a gripping semi-final against Mark Selby.
He began the match in the same blistering form, with breaks of 100, 84 and 131 handing him a 3-0 lead.
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McManus did get a score against his name in frame six and added to it in the following frame, though he still could not produce a missing half century.
