Mark Selby resumes the defence of his World Championship title when he locks horns with China’s Xiao Guodong in the Second Round at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield on Saturday.

The reigning champion enjoyed a very comfortable start to his reign as a two-time winner, after sweeping aside Fergal O’Brien 10-2 in the opening round last weekend.

Selby will have been forgiven for expecting a tough, hard-fought encounter against O’Brien, who was involved in the longest frame in snooker history before sealing his return to the Crucible after a seven-year absence.

However, it was anything but for the world number one, as he made five breaks over 50 on the way to a very commanding victory.

The Jester has now won 12 of his last 13 matches in the final stages of snooker’s blue-riband event and will be hoping for an equally strong performance against Xiao, who finds himself in uncharted territory ahead of their showdown.

World number 44 Xiao is aiming to make it third time lucky against Selby having lost each of their two previous meetings, although the most recent of these did come at the European Tour’s Antwerp Open back in November 2011.

On his second appearance at the Crucible and first since 2014, the Shootout finalist claimed his maiden win courtesy of a surprisingly commanding 10-4 success over Ryan Day on Wednesday.

Xiao dominated the early stages as he raced into a 4-0 lead and, despite being pegged back to 4-3 by the world number 16, won six of the next seven frames to progress to the second round for the first time in Sheffield.

The 28-year-old will need to produce similar performance levels to have the best possible chance of claiming a huge scalp in Selby.

This second-round match will be contested over the best of 25 frames, with the winner setting up a quarter-final showdown against either Neil Robertson or Marco Fu at the 2017 World Championship.

Play at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield gets underway with the first eight frames at 7pm BST on Saturday and continues at 2.30pm on Sunday, before concluding at 1pm on Monday.