Scott Donaldson and Ali Carter booked their place in the final stage at the 2024 Ranking CLS yesterday and here is the report by WST:

DONALDSON AND CARTER INTO STAGE THREE

Scott Donaldson reached the last eight of a ranking event for the first time in four years as he topped Group A in the second phase of the BetVictor Championship League.

Donaldson won the invitational version of this event in 2020 and his last deep run in a ranking event came in the same year as he reached the quarter-finals of the Northern Ireland Open. The former world number 22 has slipped to 51st in the rankings, but has made a promising start to the new campaign.

Breaks of 106 and 81 helped him beat Chris Wakelin 3-1 in his opening match today in Leicester, and he then saw off Thepchaiya Un-Nooh 3-0. The group was still in the balance as Fan Zhengyi could have leapfrogged Donaldson by winning the last match of the day, and he took the opening frame with a run of 68. But Donaldson levelled with a run of 54 then crucially won frame three with a 32 clearance. Fan took the last with a 73 to draw 2-2 but that was not enough.

Donaldson goes through to stage three next Wednesday (July 3) where the last eight players will be split into two groups of four, with the two group winners to contest the final. He will be joined by Ali Carter, who topped Group E.

Neil Robertson withdrew from the group, which meant that Carter, Jack Lisowski and Wu Yize played each other twice. Having started with a 2-2 draw against Wu, five-time ranking event winner Carter got going with a 3-1 win over Lisowski. A break of 130 helped him to secure another draw against Wu, then Carter clinched top spot by beating Lisowski 3-1 for a second time, his top break 120.

As always you will find all the results on snooker.org

Scott Donaldson is a hard worker. He’s humble, maybe too humble. I would love to see him win this. He’s better than his ranking shows. It’s not easy to “grow” in the shadow of the Scottish Greats.

I have very little to say about the matches, as I saw very little of the action yesterday. That Ali Carter beat Jack Lisowski twice, by 3-1 both times, didn’t please me one bit but didn’t surprise me at all. I have given up all hopes on Jack ever doing justice to his extraordinary natural talent. I love watching him play and I hate watching him play … all at the same time because when it works, he’s marvellous, but it only works until the next careless shot or the next lapse of concentration and those always come, sooner or later but they come. They are just as foreseeable as rain in Belgium, never a matter of “if”, it’s only about “when”.

The last frame between Theppy and Wakelin was hilarious. With no hope to progress both had completely lost their concentration and played some seriously slapstick snooker, demonstrating that even at their level they need to stay focused on every shot or it “degenerates” pretty quickly! At least they had a good laugh about it.

Finally … I owe Neil Robertson an apology. If what I read is true, it wasn’t a mishap. It seems that the calendar that was initially communicated to the players for this event was changed at some point later in time. In between however Neil had committed to exhibitions in China at dates that were “free” for him in the initial version he had got