Luca Brecel completed an impressive comeback to beat Ryan Day 10-7 and avoid becoming the latest former champion to exit the World Snooker Championship at the first-round stage.
The 2023 winner looked in danger of joining the defending champion, Kyren Wilson, and Neil Robertson in crashing out when he was 5-1 down to Day during the first session. But Brecel won the final three frames on Wednesday to make it 5-4 and get himself right back in the match.
Welsh qualifier Day, a three-time Crucible quarter-finalist, made a century in the opening frame of Thursday’s second session to put Brecel on the back foot once more. The Belgian then took charge of a scrappy contest, winning three successive frames again to take a 7-6 lead into the mid-session interval.
Although Day won the next frame to level at 7-7, Brecel went back in front at the next opportunity before edging a tight 16th frame – which was decided by a black-ball shootout – thanks in no small part to an audacious long double on the green with just the colours remaining.
Needing one more frame for victory, Brecel wrapped it up by a scoreline of 55-14 and will face Ding Junhui in the second round. The result was also a significant milestone for the No 7 seed – the first match he has won at the Crucible outside his surprise run to the title in 2023.
“It’s good to win, I was expecting to win, to be honest,” Brecel said. “Last night, when I got back to 5-4 from 5-1 down, I played some good stuff. If that goes 7-2, I’m going to lose. That was a turning point but, even at 5-1 down, I still felt OK and relaxed. I never really panic, especially here as it’s so long. I’ve made so many comebacks here, so it wasn’t surprising. I always felt like I was going to come back at some point. From 5-3 down I sort of felt that I couldn’t really lose – no disrespect to Ryan.”
Thursday afternoon marked the start of the second round matches, with Mark Allen in early trouble against Chris Wakelin. After falling 2-0 behind, Allen steadied things with a break of 100 but a missed red allowed Wakelin to clear up and take a 3-1 lead at the mid-session interval.
An excellent snooker behind the black helped Allen cut the gap to 3-2 but his English opponent struck back with an 84 break. Wakelin, the world No 20, then took the last two frames of the session to build a commanding 6-2 lead in the first-to-13 contest.
Later on Thursday, the first round concludes with Mark Selby leading Ben Woollaston 5-4, while John Higgins faces Xiao Guodong in the last 16.
