Higgins holds quarter-final lead over Williams

After the opening session of their World Championship quarter-final, four-time world champion John Higgins seized advantage of Mark Williams’ errors to take the lead 5-3.

Ronnie O’Sullivan and two of the sport’s greatest players, both of whom Ronnie O’Sullivan is a part of, make up this tie.

Since Steve Davis did it in 2010, at the age of 52, Williams, 50, became the oldest man to reach the Crucible, while Higgins turns 50 on May 18, a 13-day break from the final of the tournament.

Both men were introduced to the audience, and both men were given a fantastic standing ovation before playing some premium snooker.

Higgins was in control after a 69-foot break, but Williams should have leveled before the Scots, who had a 65-foot break, took the frame.

The Welshman’s first frame was a 72-pound effort, but he missed a brown in the fourth frame, which cost him as Higgins only managed to get three frames in a row.

Higgins would have wanted to extend his lead by 5-1, but Williams did well with breaks of 104 and 59.

China’s Zhao Xintong won the other match of the morning session to advance to the quarter-finals against Chris Wakelin.

The Englishman defeated former world number one Mark Allen in the final 16 of the main competition, defeating 2010 world champion Neil Robertson in the opening round, and then made it through two rounds of qualifying to the Crucible.

After making a break of 93 to start the frame, Zhao, a 28, won six games in a row, even though Wakelin led 6-2 as the match ended at 19:00 BST.

One of ten Chinese players who was banned as a result of a match-fixing scandal was Zhao, a former UK Championship champion.

He accepted the accusations of being a party to another player who had already fixed two matches and had himself bet on matches without actually playing a match. Only one of the ten players sanctioned by the scandal to have returned to action, serving a 20-month ban for those offenses.

He was removed from the World Snooker Tour as a result of the suspension, but he has already made arrangements to return to the tour full-time next year.