Ronnie O’Sullivan leads Shaun Murphy 6-2 – 2011 Betfred.com World Snooker Championship
The Rocket, Ronnie O’Sullivan, has ended his opening session with a 6-2 lead over Shaun Murphy, in their second round best-of-25 match at the 2011 Betfred.com World Snooker Championship. The tournament is being staged at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield.
The three-time world champion, O’Sullivan, who suffered first round defeats in all of his last four ranking events, is now likely to make a strong bid for his fourth world title. He impressively outplayed the Spacemen, Dominic Dale, by a frame score of 10-2
in the first round and is again in the driver seat against the former 2005 World Champion, Shaun Murphy.
The game began in an old fashion, but gradually O’Sullivan started impressing everyone with his game play. The overall score-line between both players was 65-36, 88-15, 68-51, 30-72, 79-13, 80-1, 84-32 and 86-0.
The first three frames were a scrappy affair. A bout of safety play was seen among the players but in the end it was the thirty-five-year-old, O’Sullivan, who came on top to take a 3-0 lead. An only dominant break of 58 was seen during the period from the
professional English snooker player.
The World Number six, Murphy, finally managed in breaking his duck by winning the cagey fourth frame, before he mopped up a frame winning break of 76 in the following fifth, to reduce the deficit at 3-2.
Despite the challenging comeback from Murphy, everyone was left flabbergasted when the World Number ten, O’Sullivan, completely turned the tables on his opponent’s head. He fired up classy breaks of 76, 75 and 86 in the last three frames respectively, to
end his campaign with a commanding 6-2 lead.
A delighted O’Sullivan afterwards wrote on Twitter, “It's been a tough year for various reasons but hope to have turned a corner. I used to run to escape my demons. It was something positive. It kept me out of trouble. Change of heart has been helped by
Dr Steve Peters. Amazing man. It's early days but I'm enjoying the game much more”.
Both players are set to start-off with the second session, to fight out for the quarter-final berth.
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