Ding Junhui managed to come through a nail-biting quarter-final with Luca Brecel to book a semi-final clash against Ronnie O’Sullivan at the Dafabet Masters.

World number eight Ding thumped Englishman Jack Lisowski 6-1 in his opening match but Brecel, who is one of the rising stars in the sport, proved a much harder challenge on Thursday evening.

The Belgian, who edged past defending champion Mark Allen 6-5 to reach the quarter-finals, started off with a solid break of 63 before he was pegged back immediately by a brilliant 125 break from his Chinese opponent.

Brecel and Ding then traded blows – to the delight of the crowd at Alexandra Palace – to leave the scores tied at 5-5, with the match requiring a final frame to decide the winner.

Both players were suffering from nerves as the duo passed up decent opportunities and it was Brecel’s surprise miss in what was a regulation red to the middle pocket that proved to be the costliest error.

Seizing the advantage, Ding made a break of 65 to close out the match and set up a last-four encounter with O’Sullivan, who had earlier eased past Ryan Day 6-3.

Of the 19 previous meetings, the Chinese star has only won four matches and he will need to show an improvement if he is going to add win number five to his CV.

Ding and O’Sullivan go head-to-head on Saturday in the afternoon match and the ‘Rocket’ is the 1.29 favourite to advance into the final while his opponent is priced at 3.60.

O’Sullivan won the last meeting 6-3 at the quarter-final stage of the 2018 Players Championship and it is 5.00 for that same result to be repeated at Ally Pally.