Jak Jones ‘wanted to walk out’ of Mark Selby Crucible thrashing

Jak Jones felt Mark Selby struggled a bit in their Crucible clash, but his own performance was so embarrassing he fell to a 10-2 defeat.

The four-time world champion strolled to a comfortable victory over the 2024 Crucible finalist in their first round meeting.

The Jester from Leicester won the first six frames and was sitting pretty at 7-2 up after the first session.

Returning on Wednesday evening he wrapped up the final three frames to book his place in the last 16 against Wu Yize.

It is a very impressive scoreline against the world number 19, but it featured just three half-centuries from Selby, who made breaks of 67, 50 and 78.

The winner will not be concerned with that, but Jones felt even more frustration with his own performance as he didn’t think Selby was producing anything out of the ordinary.

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‘I felt quite good coming here. I didn’t feel much pressure this morning, I wasn’t nervous at all, or not too nervous,’ Jones told the BBC.

‘I missed a few easy balls early on, which you can’t do against the likes of Mark and it really got on top of me.

‘It turned into a bit of an embarrassing performance. I just wanted to walk out of here.

‘I don’t think Mark played his usual standard, even. I think Mark struggled a little bit. He gave me quite a few chances this morning, which probably made it worse.

‘If I’d got on the board early it could have settled me down, but it wasn’t to be.’

Selby agreed that it was not exactly dynamite from him on his way to a big win, but felt nerves played a part after back-to-back first round exits before this year.

After reaching the 2023 final, where he was beaten by Luca Brecel, Selby has lost to Joe O’Connor and Ben Woollaston in the last 32 in ’24 and ’25.

‘I didn’t play one-visit snooker,’ said Selby. ‘I felt like I lost the white a lot in the first session. I didn’t miss too many balls, I missed one or two here and there

‘I was edgy at the start, which is natural. The last two years I’ve not won the first round game.’

Selby will be expecting a tougher test in round two against Wu, who hammered Lei Peifan in his opener by the same 10-2 scoreline.

He will go in confident, though, after a good season which has seen him win the UK Championship, Champion of Champions and Invitational Championship League titles.

‘The biggest thing for me is I’ve come here confident, which is everything in this game and everything in life,’ he said.

‘Winning the UK was massive for me, not only winning it but the way I won it as well. I didn’t just scrape through, I played some good stuff.’

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