Cahill Close To Crucible Debut
James Cahill is just four frames away from becoming the first amateur to qualify for the Crucible as he took a 6-3 lead over Michael Judge in the final qualifying round of the Betfred World Championship.
Judgement Day runs on Tuesday and Wednesday at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield with the 16 winners to go through to the Crucible for the final stages, which start on Saturday.
Blackpool’s Cahill, bidding for a Crucible debut, has already knocked out Andrew Higginson and Michael Holt and surged ahead of fellow amateur Judge. Breaks of 50, 82, 96 and 103 put Cahill 4-0 ahead. He later led 6-1 before Judge took the last two frames.
Robert Milkins eased into a 7-2 lead over Anthony McGill, knocking in breaks of 59, 85 and 68.
Thepchaiya Un-Nooh came from 3-1 down to take a 5-4 lead over Joe O’Connor. Gary Wilson went 5-4 up on Liang Wenbo in a high quality session which featured breaks of 134 and 100 from Wilson and a 141 from Liang.
There were also 5-4 leads for Martin Gould over Daniel Wells, Michael Georgiou over Yan Bingtao, Zhou Yuelong over Eden Sharav and Lyu Haotian over Mark Davis.
The other eight qualifying matches start on Tuesday at 5pm, with all 16 matches played to a finish on Wednesday.