Zhao leads but Williams fights back in compelling Crucible final

Zhao Xintong holds an 11-6 overnight lead after three-time winner Mark Williams steadied the ship on day one of the World Championship final at the Crucible Theatre.

The 28-year-old dominated the opening session to open up a 7-1 advantage but Williams, who is the oldest Crucible finalist, took five of the nine frames on offer in Sunday’s second session, including a tense 17th frame.

It gives the Welshman, 50, a glimmer of hope when play resumes on Monday, although no player has previously overturned a deficit of more than four frames going into the second day of a World final.

While Zhao can be confident of becoming the first Chinese player to be crowned world champion and only the third player from outside the UK to win the title since 1997, Williams will rue what might have been despite his mini recovery.

Having looked out-of-sorts early in the day, Williams also crucially lost the sixth and 16th frames when his opponent cleared the table after he had crafted half-century breaks, only to then miss the frame-deciding ball.

While Zhao was unable to maintain the dominance he exhibited in the early part of the match, he was still able to add four more half-centuries to the breaks of 77, 100, 57, 104 and 83 that he compiled in the opening session.

Zhao, who won the UK Championship in 2021 but then served a 20-month ban for his involvement in a match-fixing scandal which rocked the sport, is hoping to join Terry Griffiths and Shaun Murphy as the only qualifiers to land snooker’s biggest prize since the tournament’s 1977 move to South Yorkshire.

He would also become the first amateur to win in Sheffield, while the £500,000 top prize would lift him to 11th in the world rankings when he returns to the main professional tour next season.

The best-of-35 final continues on Monday at 13:00 BST and will be shown live on BBC Two.

With Zhao having swept seven-time winner Ronnie O’Sullivan aside in the semi-finals, his meeting with Williams – another of snooker’s famed ‘Class of 92’ – has been billed as having the potential to be a changing-of-the-guard moment for the sport.

The age gap of 22 years is the biggest ever between two Crucible finalists and Zhao was just three years old when Williams won his first World Championship in 2000.

Williams jokingly made reference to playing Zhao in an exhibition when he was only a schoolboy after defeating Judd Trump on Saturday.

However, he was unable to replicate the performance he produced against the world number one, when at times he barely looked like missing a pot.

Instead he spent Sunday evening on a salvage operation after an error-strewn opening session left him in trouble against an opponent who settled into his first world final with consummate ease.

While Zhao had 24 hours off after defeating O’Sullivan with a session to spare, Williams will hope not to go the way of the previous two finalists to finish their semi-finals on Saturday evenings.

Both Jak Jones (7-1) and Mark Selby (6-2) suffered in the first session of the 2023 and 2024 finals and were ultimately unable to turn those contests around against eventual champions Kyren Wilson and Luca Brecel.

And Williams will have to break new ground if he is to triumph and eclipse the 10-6 deficit that he (2000 v Matthew Stevens), Stephen Hendry (1992 v Jimmy White) and Shaun Murphy (2005 v Stevens) have previously reversed in Crucible finals.