Battling Higgins avoids Crucible exit as Hendry plays to maximum

The four-times winner reached the second round of the Betfred.com World Championship with a 10-9 victory over China’s Liang Wenbo.

Higgins looked to be following in the footsteps of last year’s defending champion, Neil Robertson, who also fell at the first hurdle at the 17-day tournament in 2011.

He lost four frames in a row to Liang and the 36-year-old looked on the ropes as he trailed 8-6.

But he showed his famous fighting spirit to scrap it out and take the game to a deciding frame. Liang, China’s No 2 and a former quarter-finalist at the Crucible, was first in the balls but fouled in potting a red to let the Scotsman in.

He made 40 before missing an easy red to the centre, and 25-year-old Liang responded with 52 before a brave double failed and Higgins crawled over the finishing line to reach the last 16.

“I’m just drained,” said Higgins. “When I went 8-6 behind I was trying not to give in, but I was thinking I’ve got nothing left, and I was really struggling.

“Liang was playing some great stuff, and I thought the writing was on the wall, I thought he was closing me out. I don’t know how I’ve won it really, I probably didn’t deserve to win it because I didn’t play anywhere near well enough to merit winning that game. I just can’t believe I’ve won.

“I fancied Liang clearing up in the last frame because he made a tremendous break to make it 9-9. Luckily for me he didn’t.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve come here in the first round and had a scrappy first game. In the first session I was lucky to be 5-4 in front, then I felt good tonight and I won a good frame to make it 6-4 and was in the balls to make it 7-4.

“But then the wheels came off and I just didn’t have anything left. I’ve been struggling really badly this year and I didn’t think there was anything there.”

Victory keeps alive Higgins’s hopes of becoming the first player to retain his crown since Stephen Hendry won five in a row from 1992 to ‘96.

In an ironic twist, seven-time winner Hendry now stands in Higgins’s way when they meet in the second round on Friday.

Amazingly, the two Scots have never played each other at the Crucible, despite sharing 11 world titles between them spanning several decades.

Whatever the result, Hendry has already left his own mark on the tournament with a maximum 147 break, in frame seven, in his 10-4 victory over Stuart Bingham last night.

Hendry’s third maximum at the Crucible – his others came in 1995 and 2009 – was more amazing after he only arrived back in England 24 hours earlier after a 10,000-mile business trip to China.

“The 147 was probably one of my best, position-wise, and it was absolutely fantastic to make a third maximum here,” said Hendry, who is now level with Ronnie O’Sullivan in a hat-trick of Crucible 147s. It’s also the 11th maximum of the season and 88th in snooker history.

“I felt really good out there, and the jetlag – well, sleep is for wimps. It’s the new way, fly in to Sheffield the day before with no practice!

“That ties with me with Ronnie to have made three here, and I don’t care what Mark Williams says about the Crucible, there is no better feeling than to make one here.”

The maximum – the 11th 147 of Hendry’s career – will earn him a £40,000 bonus plus the £10,000 high break prize, providing no player matches it.

It’s the second in this year’s World Championship following one in the qualifying rounds from Robert Milkins.

Elsewhere, David Gilbert beat Martin Gould 10-8, Shaun Murphy leads Jamie Jones 5-4 and 17-year-old Belgian Luca Brecel, the youngest player in the history of the tournament, made a debut century but fell 6-3 behind to Scotland’s Stephen Maguire.

Australian Robertson moved into the second round after a 10-4 win over fellow former champion Ken Doherty.