O'Sullivan keen to resume Hendry battle

Ronnie O’Sullivan will be looking to continue his relentless pursuit of a double target when he squares up to Stephen Hendry for round two of their heavyweight battle in the Embassy World Snooker Championship.

O’Sullivan holds a 6-2 advantage going into the second session of their best-of-33 frames semi-final encounter at The Crucible Theatre today.

The Rocket knows that reaching the final will ensure he deposes Mark Williams and regains top spot in the rankings for the 2004-2005 campaign.

But the 28-year-old is also on course to bury the Sheffield hoodoo of three world defeats at the hands of seven-times champion Hendry in the past decade.

The match is regarded by many as the unofficial final and either O’Sullivan or Hendry would be red-hot favourites to topple the winner of the Matthew Stevens-Graeme Dott semi-final.

O’Sullivan scored heavily whenever he was in among the balls, particularly after the interval, and Hendry did not help his cause with several uncharacteristic errors.

There has been little love lost between the pair since O’Sullivan questioned Hendry’s sportsmanship before their meeting in the 2002 finals.

Hendry had triumphed this season against O’Sullivan in the final of the British Open and the semi-finals of the UK Championships.

But O’Sullivan, under fire for some of his behaviour around the table in the past fortnight, lived up to his tag of overwhelming 4-7 favourite with bookmakers Ladbrokes to reach his second world final.

He led 3-1 at the interval but moved into overdrive when returning to the table with breaks of 127, 67 and 98 in successive frames to move 6-1 ahead.

At least Hendry stopped a five-frame losing sequence in the final frame with an 81 although he missed a golden chance of a 147 after snookering himself on what would have been his 11th black.

In the other semi-final rank outsider Dott will take a 5-3 lead into his second session with Stevens who was 1-4 on to reach the final.

Dott needs to overcome his Welsh opponent to retain his place in snooker’s elite top 16 for 2004-2005 after provisionally sliding from 13th to 26th spot ahead of the tournament.

The Scot demonstrated to Stevens, contesting his fourth semi-final in the past five years, that he will have no saunter to victory

Dott cleared the colours to win the opener, doubled his lead with a clearance of 76 and, after Stevens had opened his account in the third, restored his two frame advantage via a decisive opening run of 61.

Dott had a golden chance to move 4-1 ahead but after compiling 55 he missed a simple black off its spot – and Stevens took advantage with a 43 clearance to the pink.

The sixth frame lasted nearly 43 minutes before Stevens conceded after failing to escape from a series of snookers on the yellow.

He retaliated in the best possible manner with a 115 clearance – his sixth century in this year’s championships to reduce Dott’s lead to 4-3 but the outsider won a scrappy final frame of the session.