Matthew Stevens Enters Winners Group of Snooker Championship League 2011

Matthew Stevens Enters Winners Group of Snooker Championship League 2011

Matthew Stevens of Wales entered the winners group of Snooker Championship League 2011 winning the play-offs of group seven on Tuesday. With his entry, the winners group has been completed.
Stevens defeated Stephen Lee 3-1 and Liang Wenbo 3-0 in the semi-final and final respectively.

At the end of the group matches Liang Wenbo was leading the group with four points. The points table after the group matches is as follows.

No.     Player                           Played     Won      Lost        *F.W      *F.L        Points

1        Liang Wenbo                     6             4          2            15           9            4

2        Matthew Stevens               6             4          2            15           12          4

3        Stephen Lee                     6             4          2             12          12           4

4        Andrew Higginson              6             3         3             11           11          3

5        Mark King                         6             2          4             13          14          2

6        Marco Fu                          6             2          4             11          12          2

7        Martin Gould                     6             2          4              8           15          2

*F.W = Frames Won

*F.L = Frames Lost

The top four reached to the play-off stage and the remaining three were eliminated.

Stevens faced Lee in the semi-final match where he crashed him 3-1 to surge into the final against Wenbo.

Stevens came out strong in the first frame of the semi-final after Lee was 8-0 ahead. A sensational break of 61 brought him 61-8 and he clinched the frame to move within one frame lead
of 1-0. The lead soon moved up to 2-0 after the 2003 UK Champion Stevens sparked his cue all over the table in the second frame and firing a beautiful century break of 134, he grabbed the frame 136-0.

Lee capitalised in the third frame when he gave in a half century break of 55 and took the frame 1-62 to reduce the Welshman’s two-frame lead to 2-1. The Welsh Dragon stormed into the
final match after he clicked the semi-final victory hitting an impressive half century break of 50. He clinched the fourth and last frame by 86-8.

Stevens, the 2005 World Snooker Championship runner-up to Shaun Murphy, dominated the final completely. He outplayed the Chinese in the match whitewashing him 3-0. A superb 101 break in
the very first frame got him the frame 115-5 as well as one-frame lead over Wenbo. The 2009 Beijing International Challenge winner Wenbo could not get any chance to capitalise back as the 33-year-old Welshman continued to strike in the next frames. Stevens
took the second frame 69-34 followed by the third 76-0 to grab a whitewash victory over the 24-year-old Chinese.

Stevens marked his spot in the winners group along with Ryan Day, Mark Williams, Ali Carter, Mark Selby, Mark Allen and Shaun Murphy. The matches of winners group starts on Wednesday 23^rd
March.

The defending champion Hong Kong’s Marco Fu couldn’t make it to the winners group. He reached to the semi-final of group four of the Snooker Championship League 2011 but lost to Ali Carter
3-2.

aadmin

aadmin is a contributor at SportQA. We are committed to providing well-researched, accurate, and valuable content to our readers.