Original title: Snooker UK Championship: Ding Junhui reverses and advances top 16 Robertson Higgins and other famous players are out
On the morning of the 14th Beijing time, the second day of the main match of the British Snooker Championship 2022 concluded. Three-time British Championship champion and Chinese star Ding Junhui knocked out No. 10 seed Barry Hawkins 6: 3 and became the first player to advance in this tournament. The top 16 Chinese players.
In the second day of the British Championships, the 1/16 finals continued. There were two Chinese players in the competition: Ding Junhui and Lu Haotian won one and lost one.
The battle between Ding Junhui, the “big brother” of Chinese billiards, and the famous English player Barry Hawkins became the focus of the day. Though he is the triple crown champion of the British championships, Ding Junhui has met a three-year drought after winning the British championships for the third time in 2019 and his 14th career championship. In the two ranking matches this season, the “No. 1 brother” of Chinese billiards has performed sluggishly, stopping in the top 32 of the British Open and also conceding one round of the Northern Ireland Open. His latest world ranking is down to 38th name.
In the previous confrontation between the two sides, Ding Junhui was at a disadvantage. The two teams have played against each other in the last 3 times and Ding Junhui did not win. Therefore, Ding Junhui is considered more threatening than good in this campaign.
At the start of the match, Ding Junhui was still in bad shape, losing 1:3 in the first 4 rounds. However, after a short adjustment in the midfield, Ding Junhui won 5 games in a row and finally overturned and won 6: 3. In the fifth game, he scored the 600th single hit of his career and became the seventh player in the history to reach this goal.
Lu Haotian, who took the lead, failed to seize the opportunity and lost a good game while leading 3:2, and lost to Belgium’s “first brother” Brechel 4:6. Defending champion Zhao Xintong was shocked on the first day of competition, making Ding Junhui the only Chinese player to advance to the top 16 of this tournament so far.
It is worth mentioning that Zhao Xintong was the only seeded player eliminated on the first day of competition, and Lu Haotian was the only unseeded player eliminated on the second day of competition.
In the other two matches of the day, world No. 2 “Melbourne Machine” Neil Robertson and world No. 5 Scottish “Wizard” John Higgins were upset one after the other. The former lost to England veteran Joe Perry 2 :6 , who lost 4:6 against another English player, Tom Ford. The two-day main match of the UK championship has ended so far and 4 seeds have been eliminated.
On the third day of the British Championship, the round of 16 will continue. The 4 games of the day will introduce 3 world championship champions: ‘Rocket’ O’Sullivan, who leads the table, ‘Golden Left Hand’ Mark Williams and ‘Shark’ Bingham. The other game was the “Chinese Derby” brought by Yan Bingtao and Zhou Yuelong, which also meant that the Chinese Legion secured the second place in the top 16 in advance.
