Day two at the Crucible and as has been so often the case, the day was dominated both on & off the table by one man.
Coming into the day Ronnie O'Sullivan had a real fight on his hands as he lead Gary Wilson by just the single frame at 5-4 and although Ronnie took the opener to lead 6-4 Wilson showed he wasn't for rolling over with a century to close to 6-5.From here though Ronnie visibly upped a gear as breaks of 124,74 & 83 moved to the brink of round two at 9-5.
Wilson to his credit fought on & closed to 9-7,but another big break,this time a 90 saw Ronnie over the line & his joy was obvious as he punched the air in delight.
This was only half the story though as reports began to surface mid evening on the BBC sports pages of an interesting press conference.I'm not going to start quoting it word for word here,but I fully urge anyone interested to not just read the transcript ,but to actually listen to it online.He actually comes across as far more measured & calm than it reads in reports.
The other man going through to the last 16 today was Kyren Wilson,who despite playing far below his best,managed to get it together enough near the end to pull away from 7-6 & finally break the resistance of David Grace,taking the last three frames to win 10-7
Elsewhere Shaun Murphy will go into tomorrow morning with a 6-3 lead over 17 yr old Yan Bingtao after a highly entertaining first session. Murphy looked at times to be striking the ball as well as ever,but Bingtao also had his moments too which included joining that exclusive club to get a century on their Crucible debut. Murphy though will be delighted that he took the final frame of the session to be three clear & he will want to finish this off quickly when they resume tomorrow afternoon
The battle of the former world champions between Stuart Bingham & Peter Ebdon couldn't be more evenly poised as the 2015 champ holds a slender 5-4 overnight lead. The real fireworks in this one though came in the last of the session as Ebdon fought back from 42 behind with 27 on the table to nick it on a respotted black.He then rolled back the years with a good old fashioned roar of "come on"though it must be said this time around it was only done tongue in cheek.
Also delicately poised is the clash between Mark Allen & Jimmy Robertson with the Ulsterman taking the last three of the session from 4-2 down to lead 5-4.
Things look a little more straight forward in the last match of the day though as Luca Brecel produced a stunning session to lead former two time semi finalist here Marco Fu 7-2.Brecel has been talking a big game in the build up to this and here at least he seems to backing it up.
As I said above though,the headlines tomorrow will only be focusing on one man.
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