Ding Junhui takes four-frame lead over Alan McManus at World Championship
By PA Sport
Last Updated: 28/04/16 11:53pm
Ding Junhui fired four centuries to take a commanding 6-2 lead over Alan McManus in the first session of their World Championship semi-final while Mark Selby leads Marco Fu 5-3.
The Chinese player had to qualify for the Crucible this year after slipping out of the world's top 16 but has been unstoppable up to this point.
He dropped just seven frames in three best-of-19 qualifying matches and disposed of Martin Gould and Judd Trump in the first two rounds before winning his quarter-final against Mark Williams 13-3 with a session to spare.
He began this match in the same blistering form, with breaks of 100, 84 and 131 taking him into a 3-0 lead.
He added the fourth and made another 100 break to go 5-0 up before McManus, in the last four for the first time since 1993, finally got on the board in frame six.
A precise long red helped McManus take the next but Ding rattled in a 128 in the last frame of the session for a 6-2 advantage in the best of 33 frames.
The final could yet be an all-Asian affair, with Marco Fu playing Mark Selby in the other semi-final although the Hong Kong star is currently 5-3 down to the world No 1.
Selby won the opening three frames with half-century breaks in frames two and three before Fu got on the scoreboard by winning the next two including a break of 72 and the pair shared four frames after the mid-session interval.
