Allen storms past Higgins at Wembley
Wednesday, 13 January 2010 18:04Northern Ireland's Mark Allen recorded a notable scalp when he beat World Champion John Higgins 6-3 in the second round of the Masters at Wembley.
The 23-year-old will now face Mark Selby, who beat China's Ding Junhui 6-1 on Sunday, in the last eight.
Higgins took the opening frame in an intriguing tactical battle, taking the initiative after Allen endured a run of four successive misses.
Allen pulled back in the second frame, taking advantage of indifferent form from his opponent. The left hander's positional play was far from perfect, but Higgins failed to capitalise and Allen was accomplished enough to forge further ahead with victory in the third frame.
Higgins responded in the fourth and appeared set to be levelling the match, but fouled, touching a red with his cue as he was lining up a black.
Allen took full advantage to take a two-frame advantage at the mid-session interval.
Higgins urgently needed to wrest the initiative from his young opponent in the fifth frame and duly made his highest break of the contest, 39.
Despite the miss he won a tactical battle on the pink to narrow the deficit. World number 11 Allen made a break of 51 in the sixth frame and it was enough to hold on, but again Higgins hit back to narrow the deficit at 4-3.
The see-saw battle continued, with Allen taking the eighth frame and he built to 50 without response in the ninth before clinching the match as Higgins' terrible display continued.
Allen conceded his performance was poor and he was surprised Higgins was even worse.
After his triumph, Allen told BBC Sport: 'It wasn't very good. I missed too many balls. It was an unusual John Higgins out there today. Everyone has their off days, it's just unexpected.'
