Snooker: Doherty suffers 'lump' bad luck

As if there was not enough standing in the way of Ken Doherty and the World Championship final then he could have done without lumps under the cloth making his ball veer off course here yesterday.

But incredibly, that is exactly what happened to the Irishman as a straightforward shot was deflected away which ultimately allowed Paul Hunter to take a frame he never looked like winning and go on to forge a 6-2 lead.

The players looked baffled, the referee looked baffled and so did the table-fitters until they discovered, at the end of the session, that something had come loose under the cloth. "The table being used for the semi-final match was repositioned on Wednesday night to create the one table set-up," a tournament spokesman admitted as officials were forced to field yet more questions about tables that have been attracting complaints from players all tournament. "As they settled it into the floor of the arena, the baulk slate joint moved slightly and a few fragments of plaster of Paris collected under the baize near the brown spot. Table-fitters rectified the problem immediately after the session finished in time for the start of the second semi-final between Mark Williams and Stephen Lee."

That was little consolation for Doherty, the 1997 champion, who found himself the victim of both terrible bad luck as well as a Hunter gathering confidence with every match he plays at the Crucible. In his four previous World Championships here – in which he recorded just one first-round win – Hunter had looked about as much at home as a Yorkshireman would at Old Trafford, which is strange seeing as he hails from Leeds, a mere long pot up the M1. He is the closest the Sheffield crowd have to a local lad and they cheered on every pot in a first session of the best-of-33 semi-final that was as scrappy as it was bizarre.

Hunter held his nerve the better, despite the odd kick off the "lumpy" brown spot and the fact that he was playing his first "one-table" match in this most imposing of arenas. But as a dual Masters winner in the raucous surrounds of Wembley, Hunter is no stranger to pressure and with timely breaks of 63, 52, and 49 – as well as that lucky third frame when Doherty got anything but the rub of the green – the 24-year-old pulled clear.

In the other semi-final, Williams was making light work of the challenge of Lee, the world No 1 racing away with some clinical snooker to take a 7-1 lead.

WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP (Sheffield) Semi-finals (best of 33 frames): P Hunter (Eng) leads K Doherty (Irl) 6-2 (resumes 10.0am today). M Williams (Wal) leads S Lee (Eng) 7-1 (resumes 2.30pm today)