Snooker: O'sullivan Rockets Back Into Final Contention

Snooker prepared itself for the Year Dott here yesterday, and the tearing asunder of the game's history books. Graeme Dott, the biggest outsider in the long list of Embassy World Snooker finals, went 5-0 up against Ronnie O'Sullivan, the most extravagantly gifted player these championships have seen.

O'Sullivan, though, will go into today's final two sessions of the best-of-35-frames match leading 9-7 and reinstated as firm favourite. He rallied to win the last three frames of the first session to trail 5-3 and then won the evening session 6-2 to restore brutal reality to the stage of the Crucible Theatre.

Dott had succeeded where the organisers had failed when be brought utter silence to the proceedings. Even the rogue mobile phones and rustling of sweet wrappers that had been an irritating feature of the previous fortnight fell quiet and quiet as the original 200-1 outsider left O'Sullivan squirming in his chair.

O'Sullivan failed to pot a single ball in the third, fourth and fifth frames and at one stage Dott scored 343 points without reply.

Dott, without a tournament win in 10 years as a professional, having never reached the last 16 of these championships in nine attempts, had even snapped his cue in abject despair as recently as January.

Ladbrokes had offered odds of 66-1 against the 26-year-old Glaswegian winning the first five frames. But when he did so his chances of ultimate victory changed from 6-1 to 5-4 while O'Sullivan's 1-12 was amended to 4-7.

In the opening eight frames O'Sullivan missed badly only once, with a simple brown in the first game, but that let Dott in for a winning break of 71.

Dott, currently ranked 13 and until now the most anony mous of the world's leading 16 players, made it 2-0 with a break of 77 in the next frame. And when O'Sullivan missed a difficult red the Scot returned with a carefully measured 64 to win it 108-0.

Breaks of 23 - starting with a magnificent long red - 38 and 36 gave Dott a 4-0 advantage at the interval and it was little wonder that O'Sullivan seemed anxious to seek out his dressing room and wise words from his new mentor Ray Reardon.

But they seemed of little use when Dott took the fifth frame 61-0 after a protracted opening safety exchange. O'Sullivan needed only one snooker but, dejected, he remained in his chair. By now that chair was looking as uncomfortable as a sack of potatoes; the most serious injury a snooker player can suffer in a final is numbness of the posterior. He will - as O'Sullivan did yesterday afternoon - disguise his discomfort with an affectation of indifference.

O'Sullivan yawned, rubbed his eyes, flicked imaginary foreign objects from his clothes and played with his hair to convey an attitude of nonchalance. And it was totally unconvincing.

Supporters of the Rocket, meanwhile, looked like children on a rainy bonfire night. When O'Sullivan won the sixth frame, with a break of 100, he raised his cue to the audience in mock celebration which was greeted with loud, ironic cheers. Then he won the last two to trail 5-3.

In the first five frames Dott had enjoyed the rub of the green - and the red, pink and black for that matter. He had played extraordinarily well, with both his potting and safety looking impeccable. But the balls had also rolled for him and now they had stopped doing so.

O'Sullivan won the first frame of the evening session 87-0, with breaks of 56 and 30, but Dott remained defiant and battled back to win the 10th 59-0.

O'Sullivan, though, was now back to his fluent best and he won the next two frames to level at 6-6, a break of 78 clinching the 12th. After the interval it was expected that O'Sullivan would take charge but, when he missed a red, Dott responded with an aggressive break of 86 to retake the lead.

O'Sullivan moved once more at 7-7 and then moved into the lead for the first time with breaks of 33 and 34 in the 15th before taking the final frame with breaks of 33 and 36. It was Dott's turn to try to look indifferent.