Ronnie O’Sullivan survived a mid-session blip against Peter Ebdon to seal his place in the Masters semi-finals.

The Rocket stormed to a 4-0 lead, producing some of his best snooker along the way, but became sloppy in the fifth and sixth frames – letting Ebdon back into the match.

A superb snooker in the sixth allowed the Force to pull the score back to 4-2 – without it, there’s little doubt that O’Sullivan would have cruised to victory even quicker – and for a short time, an unlikely comeback suddenly didn’t appear entirely beyond the realms of possibility.

But just as he did in his first round match against Neil Robertson, O’Sullivan refused to panic – or look even remotely flustered for that matter – remained typically cool and extended the deficit to three frames by sealing the seventh.

With the match slipping away from Ebdon’s grasp – the score now at 5-2 – he needed something special to keep himself in the match, and achieved it by winning the frame 65-1.

Unfortunately for Ebdon, his opponent – and the crowd favourite – found his best form again by the end of the match, just as he did against Robertson.

And the inevitable soon followed. The Rocket gave the fans inside Wembley Arena a real show in the ninth and final frame – hitting a break of 106 to win the match and advance to his ninth Masters semi-finals.

He will now play the winner of this evening’s second quarter-final between Mark Williams and Shaun Murphy, on Saturday afternoon at 1pm.

Rob Swan