Stevens left feeling battered

Peter Ebdon pounded Matthew Stevens to defeat in an epic Embassy World Championship semi-final in Sheffield last night but admitted: ‘‘I don’t know how I won that match.’’

Ebdon grabbed the final three frames to claim a 17-16 win with Welshman Stevens saying: ‘‘I feel like I’ve been 10 rounds with Mike Tyson.’’

It was a dramatic finish to a 10-hour contest with Ebdon gasping: ‘‘Towards the end I didn’t think there was anyway I was going to win.

‘‘I tried to believe if I got my chances I would take them. But I didn’t handle the pressure very well and I was bitterly disappointed by that.

‘‘Everything I have worked on over the last four or five years went out of the window. I don’t know if you can give more than 100 per cent but I found something from somewhere.

‘‘To be honest, at the end I was thinking about my wife Deborah and the kids,’’ said the close to tears father of four.

‘‘I knew how much it would mean to them and that helped me focus.

‘‘However, while I’m delighted for myself I’m gutted for Matthew. He is such a lovely lad and a credit to the game.

‘‘I can’t remember what I said to him at the end of the match. I think I just told him that I’m sure he would become world champion one day.’’

For Stevens it was another last frame agony in a season littered with deciding frame defeats.

‘‘I’m disappointed because I didn’t get a chance in those last three frames,’’ he sighed. ‘‘It will take a while to get over.

‘‘It was a great match to be involved in and Peter played superbly at the end. He is a fighter who can beat the best of them.

‘‘And I’m sure he will have a chance against Stephen Hendry,’’ said the sad Carmarthen cueman.

Ebdon will now hope to avenge his 18-12 world final defeat in 1996 and he reckons: ‘‘I’m a better all-round player than I was then.

‘‘But it will be a tough game because Stephen is class personified.’’