SHEFFIELD: The 15th-ranked cueist China’s Yan Bingtao knocked out the defending champion of the World Snooker Championship Mark Selby after a match featuring the longest frame in Crucible history.
In the second-round fixture, Bingtao ranked 15th, blunted the top-ranked Selby by the scores of 13-10 in the Best of 25 to book a quarter-final berth in the ongoing tournament.
The two cueists remained involved in a see-saw battle, right from the start with Selby pulling ahead and Bingtao levels and vice versa. Both the cueists won four of the first eight frames.
Bingtao then took a decent lead 7-4 as he won the next three frames, including a century in the ninth.
Selby, however, responded quickly as he managed to claim three out of the next four frames to cut the margin to 8-7 only for Bingtao to secure victories in the next three frames to extend his lead to 11-7.
With his opponent just two shy away from the victory, Selby looked to retaliate as he copied Bingato; winning three consecutive frames and moving just one short of the Chinese cueist 11-10.
The two cueists then involved a nerve-wracking 22nd frame – the longest in the history of Crucible, lasting 85 minutes and 22 seconds, beating the previous longest by five minutes and 51 seconds.
Bingtao managed to hold his nerve calm to claim the marathon frame by 63-49 before bettering it by scoring a century in the 23rd frame to thump the defending champion Selby 13-10 in the second round.
Bingtao scored three, while Selby scored four centuries in an exciting see-saw battle. Selby scored the best break of match 132, which came in the 12th frame.
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