Yesterday, the 2023 British Open continued to deliver drama and unexpected results.
Singh Chadha Scores Huge Win Over Bingham
India’s Ishpreet Singh Chadha secured the biggest victory of his fledgling career, beating 2015 World Champion Stuart Bingham 4-2 at the Cazoo British Open in Cheltenham.
Singh Chadha is in his rookie season on the World Snooker Tour, after coming through Asia-Oceania Q School earlier this year. He’s already made a strong start, having beaten Anthony McGill to qualify for the upcoming Wuhan Open. The Mumbai cueman also ran World Champion Luca Brecel close at the recent European Masters, before bowing out 5-3.
With the scores locked at 2-2, Singh Chadha’s brilliant win was sealed with breaks of 69 and 71. His reward is a last 32 meeting with former Crucible semi-finalist David Gilbert.
“I watched the whole of the 2015 World Championship and I just admired him throughout, because of the bottle he showed. I respect him a lot. He is a great player. To beat a World Champion is of great pleasure,” said 27-year-old Singh Chadha.
“I am just treating every match as if I was playing in India. I think that is helping a lot, especially this match, I was really confident before it. I had a different mindset going on and I was very positive. That helped a lot.
“I am taking small steps, but I want to set a benchmark when I leave the tour. Every match I am going to give it my all and you need to look out.”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z3015uHW6eM%3Ffeature%3Doembed%26enablejsapi%3D1%26origin%3Dhttps%3A
Kyren Wilson made the 400th century of his career en route to an impressive 4-0 defeat of world number three Mark Allen. Wilson crafted breaks of 112 and 121 on his way to victory. Next up he faces another tough assignment against Barry Hawkins in the last 32.
Defeat for Allen ends his chances of usurping Ronnie O’Sullivan as world number one. The Northern Irishman needed to win the event to top the world rankings, meaning the Rocket will remain at the summit for the time being.
Robbie Williams scored a shock 4-1 win over four-time World Champion John Higgins to earn his place in the last 32.
It means he has now won both of his meetings with Higgins, having beaten him 5-4 at the 2020 German Masters. Williams crafted runs of 73, 91, 52 and 118 during today’s tie. He now plays Scott Donaldson.
Williams said: “John is such a classy player. Obviously one of the greatest of all-time. To be unbeaten against him, you have to celebrate these little victories when you can.
“I thought I would make a bit more of an effort in the off season and I have felt sharper as a result. I fancy doing some damage this season. I feel confident enough that I can win a tournament and that is a great mindset to have.”
The evening session saw the first of the last 32 matches get underway. Welsh three-time World Champion Mark Williams scored a 4-2 win over Gary Wilson in what was a repeat of the 2021 final. That sets up a showdown with China’s Ding Junhui in the next round.
Ding progressed with a 4-0 whitewash victory against Belgium’s Julien Leclercq, while Ali Carter beat defending champion Ryan Day 4-2 in a late night battle.
All the detailed results are on snooker.org as usual.
Also as usual a number of matches are “forgotten” by WST.
Chinese rookies He Guoqiang and Ma Hailong qualified for the last 16 round, but there’s not a word about it by WST. I’m sure that if it had been some UK rookie, worth being showcased, this would be the headline of this report…
I’m have been watching Ishpreet Singh Chadha since the start of the season. Actually, I already got interested in him before he turned pro. Some of his matches in the Asian Q-School were streamed and he caught my attention. He’s a very solid layer with a cool head. How far he will go, we’ll see, but he’s certainly as good as any of the UK Q-School qualifiers and actually better than most.
Also, WST has published the draw for the last 16 round:
Barry Hawkins/Kyren Wilson vs He Guoqiang
Graeme Dott vs Yuan Sijun/Hossein Vafaei
Ding Junhui vs Mark Williams
Hailong Ma vs Fan Zhengyi/Rod Lawler
Ali Carter vs Xiao Guodong/Sanderson Lam
Tom Ford/Jimmy Robertson vs Robbie Williams/Scott Donaldson
David Gilbert/Ishpreet Singh Chadha vs Si Jiahui/Mark Selby
Jack Lisowski/Matthew Selt vs Fergal O’Brien
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
I’m not sure I agree with your complaint, Monique. Of course, UK-centric and all, but WST is not a journalistic enterprise, with, say, “fair and balanced” in their self-advertising. Much rather, they are a profit-oriented sports-promoting venture, and thus they choose what they think is interesting for their readers. That may be questionable, but… to be frank, they probably accurately reflect the preferences of their (mostly) UK readership. Moreover, they even made the headline about Chadha – not exactly a UK citizen, is he?
I think, with your criticism of the way tournaments are scheduled, placed and organized, you are on much firmer ground.
Not sure what’s going on with Higgins. My impression is (grain of salt-alert), he’s mostly had it with the drudgery of professional snooker.
Other than that, I am impressed with the Chinese youngsters so far. They may even be more stable than others who made a big splash, but couldn’t quite keep up the level. Let’s hope, they all find the professionalism and self-confidence required to achieve what their game promised. And, finally, what an interesting tournament this has been, so far, even in the early rounds. In my view… here’s to the randomly drawn placement – as opposed to the massive match-fixing that is tiered draw.
The problem with doing that is that they don’t extend their readership. Most educated people in mainland Europe, and many Asians are able to read English. Myself, I’m a french native speaker and I master four languages at a decent level. I know – from experience – that most Brits and Americans only understand English, but it’s different elsewhere and we would love to read more about the non-UK/Irish players.
Yes it has indeed been a pleasant surprise how well the Asian Q School graduates have done. However, those from 2022 seem to have disappeared after some decent wins last season. He Guoqiang has done particularly well after his delayed arrival to the UK: I just wish some of the commentators could be bothered to learn how to say his name.
Allen’s loss was heavy, but Williams is of course a master. Hammad Miah did indeed fail to continue his run. Ashley Hugill once again had an AST over 40s. I understand it’s not easy to change, but he needs to do something different.
I don’t mind the “FA Cup style” draw for the British Open.
But, I can’t help feeling that a lot of the ‘drama’ is lost by having the draws done so far in advance.
Why not leave the draw for the last 16 matches until after the last 32 has been played?
A or B v C or D doesn’t work for me.
Yes it’s a scheduling issue. They need to do the draw in time for players to prepare for a match the following day (or even later the same day). Some matches start at 10am, some at 10pm. They can’t just mess them around with that much uncertainty. It would be helped if they had an extra day, or an extra table.