Selby and Bingtao play Crucible’s longest frame

Defending champion Mark Selby has been knocked out of the World Snooker Championship after losing his second-round match to China’s Yan Bingtao, but the two players still made history by setting a new record for the longest frame in Crucible history.

The 22^nd frame lasted 85 minutes and 22 seconds, comfortably passing the previous mark of 79-and-a-half minutes set by Gary Wilson and Luca Brecel in 2019. Yan eventually won the frame with a break of 112, putting him within one of victory, and although Selby is often described as a player made of granite, it was likely that the loss would have been a fatal blow in the match.

Yan had established a two-frame lead as the concluding session began, and he won the next two frames of the evening to go 11-7 ahead. But Selby fought back, moving to within one frame after consecutive breaks of 86, 117 and 88, and that was what set up the record-breaking frame.

Selby and Yan had a succession of extended safety battles on the reds and colours, with both players aware of the importance of the frame and neither hoping to give their opponent the chance to clinch things. It ultimately came down to the final black, and both players missed chances at the pot, before Yan potted it into one of the centre pockets to go 12-10 ahead. After coming out on top of an exhausting frame, it was little surprise that Yan then went on to win the match.

After the match, Selby said: “I’m proud of myself. After really struggling and not enjoying the game, I came into this tournament not really knowing what to expect.

“I felt as though I was the better player for much of the match. It felt like my game was coming back a bit and I was enjoying it, so it’s positive going forward.”

Yan said: “It is an incredible win for me, everyone knows how difficult it is to beat Mark Selby in a best-of-25 frame match at the Crucible. I was just telling myself to play as well as I could. When he was feeling the pressure, he missed a few pots.

“The longest frame… that was nearly an hour and a half for a single frame. The reds all went on the cushions and we just kept potting single reds.”

Yan will face three-time world champion Mark Williams in the quarter-final.

Although the frame is the longest in Crucible history, it still falls well short of the record for the longest frame in a professional match – that falls to a qualifying session between Fergal O’Brien and David Gilbert in the final qualifying round of the 2017 World Championship, which lasted 123 minutes and 41 seconds.