World Snooker Championship 2024: David Gilbert first through to the quarter-finals

David Gilbert completed a comfortable 13-4 second round victory against Robert Milkins on Friday night to book a place in the quarter-finals of the 2024 World Snooker Championship.

Prior to this event, world number 31 Gilbert had a quiet season, with a run to the last eight of the Northern Ireland Open back in October representing his best result.

At the English Institute of Sport earlier this month, the 42-year-old negotiated two qualifying rounds to reach the Crucible for the tenth time in his career where he came back from 9-6 down to defeat defending champion Luca Brecel 10-9 on the opening day.

Gilbert took early control of his last 16 tie with Milkins by going 5-2 up, although the world number 16 produced a fantastic counter-attacking clearance in frame eight to only trail by one overnight.

However, Gilbert did serious damage in the second session on Friday morning, winning three of the opening four frames before a spell of power scoring with breaks of 67, 84, 136 and 123 helped him move 12-4 up and on the edge of progression. At one point during the session, Milkins dropped his cue in frustration after missing a relatively routine red.

The duo returned later in the day and Gilbert wasn’t occupied for long as he won the frame he required to nil inside 18 minutes. Continuing his streak from the end of the previous session, Gilbert put together a run of 421 unanswered points - only 64 shy of the all-time Crucible record set by John Higgins during his last eight victory against Anthony Hamilton in 2000. Throughout the match, Gilbert compiled eight breaks of 50 or above.

Set to return Tuesday for his second world championship quarter-final appearance, 2019 semi-finalist Gilbert will face either Stephen Maguire or Shaun Murphy.

Speaking to BBC Sport post-match, Gilbert was asked about the result, his performance and his game in general. The Englishman said: “I was confident going into it; for some reason I've found something, that’s down to my mate Andy Lee.

“I put a lot of work in with Andy, he convinced me to get practicing so we did that. But I was a bit edgy going into my first qualifying round game against David Lilley because I hadn’t played a match for such a long time because I pulled out of China and my last match I played in Wales was an absolute howler. So I just wanted to put the cue away and never play again kind of thing but once I got here, out there you either sink or swim, but this year I felt like I could swim.”