Matthew slowed down on way to Canary Wharf quarter-finals

The 31-year-old world No 2 – going for his third successive CWC title – was taken to four games by Egypt’s Ali Anwar Reda before making it safely through 11-5, 10-12, 11-5, 11-6 for Wednesday’s last eight session.

As well as finding life unexpectedly tough against his Egyptian opponent, Matthew was further slightly delayed in sealing his progress by an emergency announcement during the match informing a member of the full-house crowd that a donor kidney was available for an emergency transplant at Royal London Hospital.

Matthew was playing his first PSA match since losing to another Egyptian, Ramy Ashour, in the semi-finals of the North American Open.

“It has been nice to have some time between tournaments to work on different things” said Matthew afterwards. “There is a difference between training fitness and match fitness and this was a good hard match to start the tournament with to get time in on court.

“Having said that, I know I will need to play better against Daryl on Wednesday.”

Earlier in the evening, Selby eased his way through with victory over fellow Englishman Robbie Temple, taking just under an hour to go through on the back of an 11-6, 11-7, 11-8 triumph.

Peter Barker saw off the challenge from Hungary’s Mark Krajscak to book his spot against Germany’s ever-improving Simon Rosner.

World No 1 James Willstrop, from Leeds, will begin his campaign for a fourth CWC title when he faces Pontefract SC team-mate Saurav Ghosal at around 8pm on Tuesday night.