John Higgins, twice champion here and vastly experienced in the requirements of the 17-day marathon of the mind that is the world championship, increased his overnight 6-2 lead over Mark Allen to 13-3 at lunch and 15-9 at the close, and needs only two of tomorrow afternoon's scheduled nine frames to reach the final.
Allen was once dropped from the Northern Ireland team as an amateur for disciplinary reasons, and freely acknowledges behaving on occasion "a bit like Alex Higgins, only without the drink". Now 23, Allen has the game, the drive and the nerve to become a champion, but he is new to the Crucible's demand to sustain form and concentration through a series of long matches.
While not entirely burnt out by two high-profile 13-11 wins, over Ronnie O'Sullivan and Ryan Day, he could not find the early sharpness he needed, whereas Higgins appeared not in the least drained by consecutive 13-12 victories, taking the last three frames to beat Jamie Cope and the last two to defeat Mark Selby.
Potting 94% of the balls he attempted and at one stage winning 11 frames out of 12, Higgins made three centuries – 114, 129 and 104 – to lift his total for the tournament to eight yesterday as he threatened to clinch victory with a session to spare.
Allen, though, never stopped trying. Having managed to win the first frame of the evening on the black after Higgins had obtained the two snookers he had needed, he went on to win the session 6–2 to keep alive the faintest glimmer of his hopes of reaching the final.
In the other semi-final, Shaun Murphy tomorrow starts the penultimate session of his match against Neil Robertson with a 9–7 lead. Murphy, who won the UK Championship in December, opened a two-frame gap at 6–4 by winning a 49-minute frame on a tie-break black and from 6–5 arrived at 9–5 with a break of 93, having thoroughly dominated those three frames. However, Robertson, the first Australian semi-finalist here since the late Eddie Charlton in 1982, won the final two frames of the day to leave Murphy's supporters frustrated.
