Fu completed one of the best comebacks of recent years at the Crucible to defeat Luca Brecel 10-9 and reach the second round of the Betfred World Championship.

The Hong Kong potter looked down and out after the opening session. He trailed 7-1, although he did make a century run of 105 to reduce his arrears to 7-2 at the close of play.

Brecel became the youngest ever World Championship competitor in 2012 aged 17. This was the Belgian’s first appearance at the Crucible since – but his return ended in heartbreak as Fu overturned a significant deficit.

The Scottish Open Champion immediately applied pressure this evening, bursting out of the blocks with runs of 75 and 83 to pull within three frames at 7-4.

That became 8-5 at the mid-session and when they returned Fu continued to push the Belgian hard. He claimed three frames on the bounce and levelled the scores at 8-8. However, Brecel showed his resolve to respond with a run of 78 to move one from the win at 9-8.

Fu wasn’t to be denied and compiled breaks of 85, 46 and 56 to cross the line and complete the comeback in the first match of this year’s Championship to go to a deciding frame.

Fu remarked: “I made a similar comeback against Stuart Bingham in the World Amateur final, where I was 7-1 down and I won 11-10. But this is the Crucible. From yesterday to today it was like two different seasons, it was very hard to understand what happened, but I’m through and I’m very happy.

“It was a rollercoaster 24 hours, I was very down. I was even thinking of retiring at the way I was playing! I’ve had a great season, but yesterday’s performance was just not acceptable and after playing so well over the last year it was even tougher to handle.

“The way Luca was playing, I’ve watched some of his matches. He beat Shaun Murphy 4-0 and Shaun maybe only scored 10 points in the whole match. That was the type of standard he produced yesterday and it can be very hard to contain. But that is the beauty of long matches and it always gives you a chance to come back. The match turned around dramatically in 24 hours and its hard to understand why but that is the way it works.”