By elliott west
What’s a match when it is between friends?
Today Mark Allen took on his good friend Shaun Murphy in the first of the semi-finals at the Shanghai Masters. Off the table they laugh and joke with each other but on the baize normal service is resumed as both were just interested in getting the job done and progressing to a major final. With £200,000 on offer for the final winner! Murphy was in the end the strongest of the two, a first to ten frame match Murphy quickly had a 6-3 lead over Allen. After the interval Murphy continued to be the dominant force and knocked in breaks of 64 and 80 to make it 8-3. This was the end of the road for Mark as he never got another chance and Shaun like a blast of hot air, killed off the match, 10-3. He will now face either Neil Robertson or Ronnie O’Sullivan in the final.
Murphy said in his post match interview “I know there is good snooker in there” and how right he was. Murphy is like a fine wine; he gets better with age. Perhaps not showing his best on the table at all times as his form spikes and dips, describing last year’s performance as “the worst in my career” Shaun never centres his frustration on the table. Allen on the other hand proves that (to coin a phrase from the political world) “a day is a long time” and so he must bitterly realise that after his great deconstruction of Trump yesterday. However, this a different day and match and maybe Allen’s fire was extinguished temporarily by the Rolls Royce cue action of Shaun, who today played out of his snooker skin.
We will have to wait until tomorrow to find out who Shaun Murphy will play but if O’Sullivan beats Robertson then this could be a headache for Shaun. Perhaps Murphy’s mistake when he plays Ronnie is that he openly respects him. Snooker is no love in and so when you play someone who means something to you, you have to put away in a drawer while you play them. If you don’t the player inflicts a fatal puncture wound on you and it is only a matter of time in the match when you are spat out by the Ronnie machine.
Murphy’s recent criticism of Ronnie last season clouded the water between the two but in the end both players are different breeds of the game and ambassadors in their own fields.
