Judd Trump beats Chris Wakelin in the World Snooker Championship
Judd Trump survived a major Crucible scare as he fended off former supermarket delivery driver Chris Wakelin in a Betfred World Championship thriller.
Trump won 10-9 in a gripping late-night finish as Wakelin fell agonisingly short of making a dream debut.
At 8-4 adrift, Wakelin's hopes looked forlorn, but he reeled off four frames in a row to draw level and held his game together to force a decider.
A string of errors followed from both men before Trump edged through to face Ricky Walden in the second round.
Trump had missed a difficult black for the match in the 18th frame, leaving it close to the green pocket, and Wakelin jumped on his chance to take the contest the full distance.
The world number 55, up against the fourth-ranked player, was chasing arguably the biggest upset of this year's World Championship so far.
It came down to a test of nerve and Trump looked unsteady, missing a straightforward blue as he looked to string together a match-winning break.
He had a lifeline when Wakelin overcut the same ball after building a 20-point lead. The mistakes kept coming and Wakelin had a stroke of bad luck at a critical moment when he ran the green into the black and it rolled into the pocket.
Trump, now 28, reached the 2011 final in Sheffield, but last year lost his opener to veteran Rory McLeod, who was ranked 54th at the time.
This time he did just enough in the last of the first-round matches to reach its conclusion, breathing a heavy sigh of relief.
Wakelin, who was working at Asda four years ago, played a match to remember but heads home to Rugby.
On the other table, Barry Hawkins finished his evening's work much earlier to take a 5-3 advantage against Lyu Haotian.
McGill battles back for win
Anthony McGill produced a sensational fightback against Ryan Day at the Crucible Theatre to book his place in the last 16 of the World Snooker Championship.
McGill looked down and out when trailing 3-7 but kept his cool to book a second-round clash with Ding Junhui.
Day enjoyed much the better of the opening session on Wednesday evening, a break of 141 in frame two laying down his early marker before runs of 62, 52 sandwiched another hundred, this time a marvellous total clearance of 145 to help him establish a 6-3 lead overnight.
The Welshman was the quickest out of the blocks in the opening frame of the second session and looked to have matters well under control when building a four-frame advantage.
However, McGill managed to hang in there and picked up the next two frames before Day hit back to lead 8-5 at the mid-session.
However, it was all one way traffic thereafter as five scrappy frames all went the way of McGill who produced some fine tactical play as Day began to unravel as his lead diminished.
A break of 60 in frame 17 saw McGill take the lead first the first time in the match and despite a couple of flukes in the following frame, Day wasn't able to capitalise and McGill held his nerve to win on the black.
The Scot punched the air with delight at the finish as Day left the arena wondering what might have been.
McGill told himself at 8-5 behind that he needed to give the remaining frames all he had, and he returned from the mid-session interval ready for a fight to the finish.
"It's the World Championship, it's a tournament worth trying in," he said. "You lose most of the matches from the position I was in, 99 per cent probably.
"But you'd lose them all if you gave up and that kind of happened last year. I was playing Stephen Maguire and I was 7-2 down and never settled. I had a bit more fight in me this year and anything can happen."
Frustrated Day said: "It's going to be a good month or so before I pick up the cue again, but I'm not really thinking about it now. I'm just going to have a bit of a break, and go again at the start of next season."
Over on the other table, a high-quality session of snooker saw Mark Allen take a 5-3 lead over Joe Perry.
Breaks of 94, 99 and 67 saw Allen race into a 3-1 lead but Perry, fresh from his first-round defeat of Mark Selby, kept in touch by winning two of the next frames before Allen pinched a potentially crucial final frame to maintain his two-frame advantage.
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