Shaun Murphy ready to defend his Wuxi Classic title – Snooker News
Englishman, Shaun Murphy, is ready to defend his Wuxi Classic title, which he won from Chinese ace, Ding Junhui, last year at the Wuxi Sports Park Stadium in China.
The tournament is a non-ranking snooker event and will be played from Thursday, July 7 to Sunday, July 10.
The 28-year-old Murphy grabbed the title last year after a tremendous comeback against Ding Junhui in the final, by the score line of 9-8. Ding took a stunning 1-5 lead in the match, firing some extraordinary knocks of 63, 67 and
62.
Murphy moved within one frame up at 2-5, after he potted a terrific century knock of 101, but it could not help him as the Chinaman took three consecutive frames after that to stretch his lead to 2-8. It seemed that Murphy had lost
hope of winning the match and would lose after the eleventh frame ends.
Despite the odds, the Harlow cueman, Murphy, bounced back brilliantly and completely unsettled his opponent, Ding, as he snatched seven consecutive frames after smashing some outstanding clearances of 78, 92, 59, 58, 96 and 86,
to make a huge impact on the arena and win the title at 9-8.
After winning the match in a dramatic fashion, Murphy said, “It's got to be one of my best ever wins, maybe not the best, but in the top three. Even at 8-2 down I never stopped believing that I could win. When I got to the interval
at 8-4 things were looking up, and from that point the scoreboard just got better and better for me.”
The 2011 Wuxi Classic is the fourth leg of a non-ranking snooker event held in China. It was contested for the first time in 2008. The tournament was named as the Jiangsu Classic in 2008 and 2009, but in 2010, it got the present
title of Wuxi Classic.
Some other top contenders that can challenge Murphy are Mark Selby, Peter Ebdon, Graeme Dott, Stephen Maguire, Matthew Stevens and Ali Carter. Murphy, along with Carter, Ding and Selby, is seeded in the quarter-final stage.
The matches will be best-of-five frames encounters including the quarter-finals, while the semi-finals will be a best-of-11 frames clash. The final will be a best-of-17 frames match.
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