Williams fights back

Mark Williams does not intend giving up his Embassy World Championship without a fight as Joe Perry found to his cost at The Crucible this morning.

The defending champion stormed right back into contention after two disastrous opening sessions against the world number 16 from Cambridgeshire.

Williams resumed this morning 10-6 down and just three frames from a shock second-round defeat.

But the world number one, eight days after becoming a father for the first time, produced his best form of the championship to capture the opening four frames of the final session.

Perry was a shadow of the player who had dominated on Friday and lost two crucial frames that could come back to haunt him.

Williams, trying to become the first player to defend the title for eight years, began his comeback with a break of 52.

He might have lost both of the next two. Instead he nicked frame 18 on the pink and after Perry missed the last red in the 19th, Williams compiled a vital 20 clearance.

Perry, bidding for his first quarter-final appearance at The Crucible, badly needed to stop the rot.

And again he had half chances in the last frame before the mid- session interval. But the former European and China Open runner-up was by now struggling to make the pots.

And Williams drew level for the first time since the sixth frame with another vital 52.

At 10-10 the match had come down to a best-of-five in order to earn a quarter-final against Paul Hunter or Matthew Stevens.

On the adjoining table, Joe Swail, a Sheffield semi-finalist in 2000 and 2001, extended his overnight 5-3 lead to 7-4 against Anthony Hamilton.