Stuart Bingham knocks out Liang Wenbo while Murphy dominates over Joe Perry in the first round of the Evergrande snooker China Championship.
After a devastating day yesterday which saw Judd Trump, Ding Junhui and Ricky Walden being beat in the first round of the China Championships, top seeds Stuart Bingham and Shaun Murphy progressed to the second round today with good performances.
With some of the other big names out already, players such as Bingham, John Higgins and Neil Robertson will be hoping to capitalise on this. With a massive £200k for the winner, there is a huge scope for players to make significant increases in their snooker rankings.
Stuart Bingham faced newly crowned English Open champion Liang Wenbo and it was predicted that this match would be a close one. Unfortunately for Wenbo, he did not come to this tournament with the same confidence that we saw in the English Open. The match was not of great quality from either player but it was Bingham who had the upper edge. Although Bingham made a 122 in the first frame, not many other breaks were seen. The final score in this match was 6-2 Bingham.
On the other table Shaun Murphy was up against Joe Perry. Both
players have struggled with snooker in recent times but today it was Murphy who had the killer instinct to send Perry home. Murphy came out extremely strong with breaks of 121, 80, 83 and 85 to open up a 4-0 lead. Although Perry managed to get himself back into the match, the earlier damage was already done by Murphy and he went on to win the match 6-4.
Later today snooker veterans John Higgins and Mark Williams will face each other while Neil Robertson and Michael Holt go at it in these interesting matches.
