When Ken Doherty beat world number six Stuart Bingham in the first round of the World Championship at The Crucible on Easter Sunday, he would probably have been expecting to face John Higgins in a meeting of former world champions in the last 16.
Instead, he finds himself contemplating a clash of the over 40s, after Alan McManus stunned Higgins with a 10-7 win.
Doherty hasn’t been in the quarter finals for eight years, while for McManus the wait has been a year longer, but for both of them it’s a great chance to end that barren spell, and one of them will have completed an unexpected journey to the last eight by Saturday night.
Both players turned professional in 1990 and made their Crucible debut the following year, so they’re very much of the same era, and their paths have crossed on many big occasions.
Their two previous Crucible meetings were, like this one, both in the last 16. The first was exactly 20 years ago, when Doherty won 13-11, with McManus prevailing by the same score in 2005.
When Doherty won his first big title in 1993, he beat McManus in the final; McManus won his last by beating Doherty in 1996. They were on opposing sides when Scotland beat the Republic of Ireland in the final of both the 1996 World Cup and the 2001 Nations Cup.
Doherty has the edge in terms of the world rankings at number 28, but although McManus is currently 35th, that represents a climb of 14 places since the start of the season, and he also played a good deal better in his win over Higgins than Doherty did to beat Bingham.
So it looks too close to call, as they prepare to play the first eight frames on Friday afternoon, then return on Saturday when the first to 13 will go through to play Mark Selby or Ali Carter in the quarter finals.
