Selby battles back for victory

Mark Selby staged a brilliant fightback to win his first ranking event match this season and reach round two of the Pukka Pies UK Championship.

The 26-year-old Leicester potter was 8-4 down and staring at a dismal defeat to fellow Englishman Jamie Cope, but he reeled off five successive frames to set up a clash with Stephen Hendry or Steve Davis.

Selby went tantalisingly close to knocking John Higgins out of the World Championship in April, blowing a 12-11 lead to lose 13-12 to the eventual tournament winner.

This time he was the man behind the comeback, recovering well after dropping the first four frames of the day having resumed at 4-4.

Selby roared back with breaks of 67, 101, 57, 115 and a closing 73 to stun Cope.

Selby had approached the match with no form to boast of, having lost in the first round of the Shanghai Masters to Stuart Bingham and in his opener at the Grand Prix in Glasgow to Ken Doherty.

However, the way he fought back to defeat Cope, upping his aggression and pace, suggested he could be set for a decent run at the Telford International Centre in the coming week.

Cope had started the session with a 100 break but his confidence ebbed away as Selby began his recovery, and a missed red in the deciding frame allowed Selby in for his match-clinching break.

Selby was joined in the last 16 by Peter Ebdon who reeled off five frames in a row to sink Judd Trump 9-4, in another all-English battle, making breaks of 80 and 84 along the way.

Welshman Ryan Day went out of the tournament after a heavy 9-3 defeat to China's Liang Wenbo, but he almost had the consolation of a maximum 147 break.

Day cleared all the reds and blacks and an easy yellow in the 11th frame, when 8-2 behind, but was left with a tricky green along the cushion.

He made a precision pot, however, his positioning on the brown was then awkward, despite the colour being on its spot.

Day faced a tricky cut and saw the brown wriggle out of the jaws, meaning he had broken down on 125, and a run of 73 in the next frame from Liang wrapped up an impressive victory for this season's Shanghai Masters runner-up.

Australian Neil Robertson converted a 5-3 overnight lead into a 9-3 victory against England's Tom Ford.

Grand Prix champion Robertson was clinical and made breaks of 48, 64, 53 and 87 before finishing with a break of 119, and he will face Higgins or Ricky Walden next.

Robertson said on worldsnooker.com: 'The Grand Prix was a little while ago so it's not as if I'm still buzzing from that. I had a week off after that and have been practising hard but I feel refreshed.'

Bingham will face Stephen Maguire in round two after knocking out Joe Perry in an all-English battle.

Bingham carried a 6-2 lead into today's session, and completed a 9-4 victory without needing to find any 50-plus breaks.

Meanwhile, Hendry and Davis were engaged in an enthralling first-round battle, with the legends of the game proving a good match for one another.

Hendry, 40, developed a 7-6 lead over 52-year-old Davis as the clash neared its climax.