Judd Trump is out of the World Snooker Championship with Jak Jones pulling off a seismic shock to reach the semi-finals.
Welsh qualifier Jones, the world No 44, secured a last-four meeting with either seven-time champion Ronnie O’Sullivan or 2015 winner Stuart Bingham after a 13-9 victory over an error-strewn Trump, whose highest break in Wednesday’s final session was just 22.
Trump has won five ranking events this season and reached a further two finals, but the world No 2 was well below his best once the players resumed at 8-8 as Jones reached his second ranking semi-final, clinching victory with a break of 106 and toasting the biggest triumph of his career.
Mistakes from Trump, the 2019 champion, helped Jones establish a two-frame cushion at 11-9 after the opening two frames were shared, with Jones knocking in successive breaks in excess of fifty.
Third seed Trump then inexplicably missed two routine yellows en route to losing the 21st frame, with Jones pouncing to move one from victory, before Trump went in-off during a break in the next frame and Jones fired in a match-sealing century.
Jones is now two wins away from becoming just the third qualifier to claim the World Championship title, after Terry Griffiths in 1979 and Shaun Murphy in 2005.
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Jones reached the quarter-finals on debut in Sheffield 12 months ago before losing to Mark Allen, with the iconic venue seemingly bringing the best out of the 30-year-old.
He has only reached the quarter-finals of two other events outside the World Championship – the 2022 Gibraltar Open (when he made the semi-finals) and 2020 English Open – and had only passed the second round once in other tournaments this season, at the Welsh Open.
Jones defeated 11th seed Zhang Anda and 2023 semi-finalist Si Jiahui to reach the last eight at The Crucible, while Trump saw off Hossein Vafaei and Tom Ford before his hopes of a second world title were dashed for at least another year.
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