Rocket lifts off

Crowd favourite Ronnie O’Sullivan took a commanding 6-2 lead over Stoke young gun Jamie Cope after the opening session of their quarter-final clash at the Maplin UK Championship.

’The Rocket’ now needs just three frames to make sure of a place in the semi-finals at the Telford International Centre.

A three-time UK winner, O’Sullivan started the better of the two players and won the opening frame with breaks of 54 and 34.

Cope responded by levelling with a 69 break, before edging into a 2-1 lead with a break of 92.

But O’Sullivan, who famously walked out of his quarter-final clash with Stephen Hendry in York last year, won the next to make it 2-2 thanks to a break of 45 and a 23 clearance.

Refreshed after the mid-session interval, O’Sullivan returned to pocket a superb 137 break to lead for the first time in the match at this year’s tournament.

And it got even better as a break of 62 made it 4-2 to the two-time world champion.

Cope, twice a ranking event runner-up last season, should have clawed back to 4-3, but broke down on a break of 44 and O’Sullivan won it with a cool run of 94.

There was a chance for Cope to reduce his arrears to 5-3, but he ran out of position on a break of 51 and it was O’Sullivan who pinched the frame with a clearance of 20.

Leicester potter Mark Selby and Hong Kong cueman Marco Fu were deadlocked at 4-4 in the second of the day's quarter-finals.

Selby, last season’s 888.com World Championship runner-up, started in sparkling fashion with a superb 130 break.

The world number 11 followed that with a cool 97 break, which would have been a second successive century if he had not missed a difficult black.

Fu, winner of the Royal London Watches Grand Prix in Aberdeen this season, rallied and pocketed a break of 77 to make it 2-1.

Selby got in first in the next frame and took control with a break of 47, but it was Fu who levelled matters with a break of 44 and a frame-clinching clearance of 26.

Fu made it three frames in succession by clinching the next frame with a composed break of 52, only for Selby to square matters by winning a scrappy sixth frame which nearly lasted half an hour.

Selby got back on track with his second century of the match, his break of 101 enough for a 4-3 lead.

However, it was Fu who won the final frame of the session to leave the match finely-poised ahead of tonight’s resumption.