The Hindu : Sport / Billiards & Snooker : Higgins wins a thriller; Hendry beaten

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Higgins wins a thriller; Hendry beaten

SHEFFIELD: It was a tale of contrasting fortunes for two former Scottish snooker World champions at The Crucible on Wednesday as seven-times champion Stephen Hendry lost 13-11 to Shaun Murphy but two-time champion John Higgins performed another Houdini act to move through to the semifinals.

Hendry went from the high of becoming the oldest player to score a maximum 147 break in a world ranking tournament, at the age of 40 on Tuesday, to going out while Higgins too looked to be joining him before prevailing 13-12 over 2007 runner-up Mark Selby.

It was the second successive match that had seen 33-year-old Higgins prevail by the tightest of margins and set him up with a semifinal clash with Northern Ireland’s surprise package Mark Allen, who beat Ryan Day 13-11 to add to the scalp of Ronnie O’Sullivan in the previous round.

Murphy — champion in 2005 — will next play Australian blond bombshell Neil Robertson in the last four after the exuberant Aussie beat second seed Stephen Maguire 13-8.

The results:

Quarterfinals: Shaun Murphy (Eng) bt Stephen Hendry (Sco) 13-11; Mark Allen (NIR) bt Ryan Day (Wal) 13-11, Neil Robertson (Aus) bt Stephen Maguire (Sco) 13-8, John Higgins (Sco) bt Mark Selby (Eng) 13-12. — Agencies

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