LONDON: China's Ding Junhui saw his lead in the World Championship semi-final reduced by two frames as Alan McManus fought back at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre on Friday.
Ding won three of Friday's first four frames to go 9-3 up only for Scotland's McManus to win four in a row to reduce his advantage at the end of the session to 9-7.
The best of 33-frame match will be played to a finish later Friday.
So far the duo have shared eight three-figure breaks -- matching the record for the number of centuries in a single World Championship match.
Ding started Friday with a break of 138 to go 7-2 up only for the 45-year-old McManus, the oldest semi-finalist at the Crucible since Ray Reardon in 1985, to respond with a contribution of 107 in the next.
But Ding, hoping to become the first Asian player to be crowned world champion, hit back with clearances of 90 and 97 to go six frames clear.
Whatever happened during the mid-session interval clearly worked for McManus as he won the two frames immediately after the resumption, the second with a clearance of 136 that included a trick-shot black.
McManus, who beat four-times world champion John Higgins in the quarter-finals, maintained his charge by taking the 15th frame before rounding off the session with an impressive break of 125.
The final could yet be an all-Asian affair, with Hong Kong's world number 14 Marco Fu playing Mark Selby in the other semi-final.
At the end of Thursday's opening session, 2014 world champion Selby was 5-3 ahead.
The world number one raced to a 3-0 lead with half-century breaks in frames two and three. But Fu hit back with a 72, and the pair shared four frames after the mid-session interval.
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