Higgins demolishes Chang 9-2 to set up Wilson final in Nanjing

John Higgins produced a vintage display in Nanjing on Friday, thrashing Chang Bingyu 9-2 in the semi-final of the International Championship to reach his 61st ranking final and set up a Saturday showdown with Kyren Wilson. The four-time world champion was close to flawless across two sessions at the SNC National Fitness Centre, winning the last seven frames of a match that had briefly promised a contest before Higgins took complete control.

The scoreline barely tells the story of how one-sided the afternoon became. Chang, the form player of the week, levelled the match at 1-1 with a break of 82 after Higgins had taken the opener with an 80. From that moment on, the Scot barely gave his opponent a look in. Breaks of 55 and 93 moved Higgins 3-1 ahead at the mid-session interval, and he stole the fifth frame from behind by clearing the colours and finishing on the black along the top cushion.

A ruthless afternoon in Nanjing

Higgins saved his best for the frames that followed. A clearance of 131 in the sixth frame underlined that the 51-year-old was rediscovering his best form at exactly the right stage of the tournament, and centuries of 103 and 110 either side of a 74 from Chang carried him to a 6-2 lead at the end of the first session. The evening session offered Chang no way back. Higgins opened it with his third century in four frames and then closed the match on the final black of the 11th frame, winning all three frames of the second session within an hour of the restart.

Chang had only a fleeting chance in the final frame, when Higgins produced a rare miss, but the young Chinese player could not find the composure to spark any sort of comeback. It was a harsh ending to a remarkable week for Chang, who arrived in the last four as the tournament's form horse. The recent Wuhan Open winner had compiled 13 centuries across the week in Nanjing, four of them in a quarter-final victory over world number one Zhao Xintong, and more than double the total managed by the other three semi-finalists combined.

The form horse stopped cold

That record counted for nothing once Higgins found his rhythm. The Scot's safety play kept Chang pinned in trouble, his long potting was precise, and his scoring, when the chances came, was ruthless. Higgins outscored Chang 849 points to 423 across the 11 frames, and the gulf in the second session was total. Chang's 82 in the second frame and his 74 in the seventh were the only moments when he looked like the player who had swept aside Zhao Xintong, and even those frames ended with Higgins in control of the match.

The route to the semi-final had already shown that Higgins was building towards something special. He edged Mark Williams 6-5 in a meeting of two members of snooker's famous Class of 92, then beat Marco Fu 6-3 in the quarter-finals. Chang's own path had been just as impressive, with a 6-3 win over Zhao Xintong underlining his rise, but the semi-final exposed the gap that still separates a talented young contender from one of the greatest players the sport has produced.

History waiting on Saturday

The reward for Higgins is a place in Saturday's final, a best-of-19-frames contest against Kyren Wilson that begins at 06:00 GMT, with the second session at 11:30 GMT. The winner will collect a cheque for 175,000 pounds, but for Higgins the prize is about far more than money. Victory would deliver a 34th ranking title, his first since the 2025 Tour Championship in Manchester, and would make him the oldest ranking event winner in the history of professional snooker.

At 51 years and 172 days, Higgins would pass the mark set by his fellow Class of 92 member Mark Williams, who won last season's Xi'an Grand Prix at 50 years and 206 days. Higgins has already won this title once, in 2015, and he was runner-up in Nanjing last year, when Wu Yize beat him 10-6 to win his first ranking title. The Scot knows the venue, knows the occasion, and now knows he is playing well enough to win it.

A final with a score to settle

Wilson will be a formidable obstacle. The world number nine reached his 20th ranking final by beating Fan Zhengyi 9-6 on Thursday, overturning a 5-3 deficit in the opening semi-final. The Northern Ireland Open champion is on an 11-match winning streak, having thrashed Jak Jones 9-2 in the Belfast final last Sunday, and he is aiming to become only the 16th player in snooker history to win back-to-back ranking titles.

Saturday's final is also a repeat of January's Masters final, when Wilson beat Higgins 10-6. Higgins still leads their head-to-head meetings by eight wins to four, and he will take confidence from the manner of his semi-final performance. If he plays on Saturday the way he played against Chang, the record books may need rewriting before the weekend is over.