Mark Selby labelled his own performance 'pathetic' in World Snooker Championship defeat to Wu Yize, but felt 'horrific' table conditions did not help. The 22-year-old Wu secured a huge 13-11 win over the four-time world champion to book a spot in the Crucible semi-finals.
It was a hard-fought contest, which saw Selby race out of the blocks with two centuries in the first two frames, but then struggle to find his best form from there on in. Wu did not really hit the heights either, with just five half-centuries and on tons over the match, but did enough to down the Leicester legend, who showed serious frustration late in the piece.
The normally calm, disciplined Selby bashed his cue on the table at one stage, in an incredibly unusual scene for the 42-year-old. The Jester from Leicester was frustrated with himself after missing a number of balls he would not expect to, but also with the conditions at the Crucible, which he thought were well short of the standard he would expect.
'Yeah, just pathetic really,' Selby said of his own performance. 'First session I played some good stuff and then after that, it was rubbish.'
'Concentration all over the place, just in and out, I was trying different tempos and stuff. I was trying to get on with it and then I was missing a silly ball and I thought, right, just take your time and then I'll miss a silly ball and I was just all over the place in the end.'
'But I felt like I let the table get to me a little bit, felt like the conditions were probably as bad as I've experienced here at the World Championship, for sure. Even the game against Jak Jones [in round one], I felt like the table was heavy and pingy.'
'Even last night they re-covered it, so I thought, oh, I'll look forward to coming into today and I still felt it was really heavy and pingy.'
'But listen, obviously I still missed more than too many balls to win that match. So that's not the reason why I've lost, but it's just disappointing to come to a tournament which is the pinnacle of our sport and you think the conditions are going to play really good and they've played anything but.'
Selby felt the same in his first round win over Jones and has called on the tournament organisers to improve conditions as the tournament moves into the quarter-finals on Tuesday.
'My first game against Jak Jones, I felt like the table was absolutely horrific,' he said. 'Jak said the same to me as well. We came out and he said to me, 'Is it me or is the table just really heavy and bouncy?' And I said, 'Well, yeah, it's terrible.''
'For all the guys left in this tournament, I just hope the conditions get better, because it's so difficult to play any kind of good snooker in them conditions. And if they don't get better and then obviously it's not going to be fantastic to watch.'
Wu, who will take on Judd Trump or Hossein Vafaei in the quarter-finals, also felt conditions were tricky, but said the challenge is to adapt to them.
'I feel like the pockets were a bit smaller compared to previous years and the cushion was a bit old,' he said. 'But the table is the same for everyone so you just have to adapt.'
