RECENT history shows that when John Higgins reaches the quarter-finals of the Betfred World Snooker Championship, he invariably wins it.

So the rest of the competition will be sitting up and taking notice after the Wishaw potter put himself in prime position to qualify for the last-eight by establishing a 10-6 lead over Ricky Walden in their second-round clash on yesterday afternoon.

Higgins is a four-time world champion and on the last three occasions he has reached the quarter-finals at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre – in 2007, 2009 and 2011 – he has gone on to lift the trophy.

You have to go all the way back to 2003 to find the Scot failing to convert a last-eight appearance into a World Championship triumph and after dominating Walden so far in their best-of-25 encounter, it looks like he will have a chance to put that record to the test this year.

Higgins headed into Sunday’s session with the 5-3 advantage he earned on Saturday and laid down an early marker by reeling off the first two frames, including an impressive 90 break, to establish a four-frame lead.

The Englishman kept himself in the contest by staging a mini-revival before the mid-session interval to make it 7-5 but Higgins came out refreshed after the 15-minute rest and restored his four-frame lead.

The 40-year-old was pegged back slightly when a classy break of 74 narrowed the gap to 9-6 but he ended the session on a high by grinding out the half-hour 16th frame to leave his 33-year-old opponent a gargantuan task at 10-6 down.

Meanwhile, the Crucible Theatre crowd are unlikely to be treated to a higher-quality session of snooker at this year’s World Championship than they experienced on the other side of the partition on Sunday afternoon.

Ronnie O’Sullivan and Barry Hawkins almost resembled heavyweight boxers as they traded big blows in the form of ever-more impressive breaks to leave their second-round clash finely poised at 9-7 to Hawkins heading into Monday’s final session.

Traditionally, O’Sullivan has dominated Hawkins with ten wins from their 11 matches – the lone loss coming in their first-ever meeting back in 2002 – yet the world No.11 had shown enough in Saturday afternoon’s first session to lead 5-3.

The Rocket made a fluent 68 in the opening frame on Sunday but broke down, enabling Hawkins to pinch it on the black and take a 6-3 lead.

It is telling that in 14 years of facing O’Sullivan, that moment was the first time Hawkins had ever held a three-frame advantage but five-time world champion brushed off any ill-effects in the next with a majestic 118 break to narrow the deficit to 6-4.

That began a period of relentless scoring as Hawkins won frame 11 with a 74 break, only for O’Sullivan to respond with an 82 in the next before Hawkins posted a 65 to clinch frame 13 and his opponent’s 89 was more than enough to take the 14th.

The duo then split the final two to leave O’Sullivan 9-7 behind and in genuine danger of failing to reach the World Championship quarter-finals for just the second time in 12 years.

Watch the World Championship LIVE on Eurosport, with Colin Murray and analysis from Jimmy White and Ronnie O’Sullivan.