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Luca Brecel’s victory over Ryan Day was his first Crucible win outside of 2023, the year he won the title.Photograph: Mike Egerton/PA
Luca Brecel completed an impressive comeback to beat Ryan Day 10-7 and avoid becoming the latest former champion to exit the World Snooker Championship at the first-round stage.
The 2023 winner looked in danger of joining the defending champion, Kyren Wilson, in crashing out when he found himself 5-1 down to Day during the first session. But Brecel won the final three frames on Wednesday to make it 5-4 and get himself right back in the match.
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Welsh qualifier Day, a three-time Crucible quarter-finalist, made a century in the opening frame of Thursday’s second session to put Brecel on the back foot once more. The Belgian then took charge of a scrappy contest, winning three successive frames again to take a 7-6 lead into the mid-session interval.
Although Day won the next frame to level things up at 7-7, Brecel went back in front at the next opportunity before edging a tight 16th frame – which was decided by a black-ball shootout – thanks in no small part to an audacious long double on the green with just the colours remaining.
Needing one more frame for victory, Brecel wrapped it up by a scoreline of 55-14 and will face Ding Junhui in the second round. The result was also a significant milestone for the No 7 seed – the first match he has won at the Crucible outside of his surprise run to the title in 2023.
“It’s good to win, I was expecting to win to be honest,” Brecel told BBC Two afterwards. “Last night, when I got back to 5-4 from 5-1 down, I played some good stuff. If that goes 7-2 or something, I’m going to lose. That was a turning point but, even at 5-1 down, I still felt OK and relaxed.”
Thursday afternoon marked the start of the second round matches, with Mark Allen in early trouble against qualifier Chris Wakelin. After falling 2-0 behind, Allen steadied things with a break of 100, but a missed red allowed Wakelin to clear up and take a 3-1 lead at the mid-session interval.
An excellent snooker behind the black helped Allen cut the gap to 3-2 but his English opponent struck back with an 84 break. Wakelin, the world No 20, then took the last two frames of the session to build a commanding 6-2 lead in the first-to-13 contest.
Later on Thursday, the first round concludes with Mark Selby leading Ben Woollaston 5-4, while John Higgins faces Xiao Guodong in the last 16.
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