Highlights: Higgins vs Ronnie O'Sullivan 13-12, relive the Snooker World Championship action

The Snooker World Championship gave us a game for the ages in the 2nd round, as we unfortunately had to say goodbye to one of Ronnie O'Sullivan and John Higgins. The legendary duo gave it their all, taking their best of 25 bout all the way to a decider at 12-12.

Relive all the action in this article, where you'll find all the most important highlights from the 2nd round match that saw Ronnie O'Sullivan knocked out of the 2026 Snooker World Championship after an amazing comeback by Higgins.

Ronnie O'Sullivan was the hotter hand out of the gate, taking first blood and establishing a commanding lead after a 6-2 opening session. The pick of the bunch was this mesmerising century in the 4th frame.



The second session didn't start much better for Higgins, with him calling the O'Sullivan he was facing: "The best Ronnie I've ever seen when striking a ball". "The Rocket" was making breaks left, right and centre to lead 9-4, but finally some cracks started to appear in the armour of snooker's top star.



Higgins added another frame before two crucial moments in the 16th frame fully swung the momentum in the Scotsman's favour.





At this point Ronnie was starting to feel the heat, and a very easy miss on a red drew gasps from the Crucible crowd. Another frame looking to be comfortably going his way slipped away, with the deficit now just one.



O'Sullivan managed to put a stop to the rot that had seen him fall 10-9 behind from 9-4 up, going just 2 frames away from victory before this beautiful century from Higgins brought the scores back to deadlock.



Finally, the pair traded frames to bring it all down to just one frame - the decider at 12-12.





The Scot now leads the Class of 92 -duo's head-to-head at the Crucible 4-3, and goes on to face "The Thunder from Down Under" Neil Robertson in the quarter-finals. Here's to more epic snooker action to come!

Below you can find all the results from the 2nd round of the World Championship.




Sources: WST Youtube Channel
BBC