Snooker World Championship 2019: Ronnie O' Sullivan suffers shock defeat

Five-time world champion Ronnie O'Sullivan suffered an extremely surprising first-round defeat at the 2019 snooker World Championship in Sheffield, the world number one was defeated by amateur player James Cahill. This was the biggest surprise in the history of the tournament, the 23-year-old qualifier defeated O'Sullivan 10-8 to advance to the second round. Cahill was 5-4 up following the first day of the match and then extended his lead over the world number one to 8-5. Then O'Sullivan seemed to regain his composure and breaks of 104 and 89 to level, but Cahill, the first-ever amateur to make it through qualifying to play at the Crucible, remained incredibly calm and won the final two frames. "I could barely stand up at the end. I am not really sure what to say," Cahill told BBC Sport after the match. "I scored a good pressure 70 to go 6-5 up and after that I felt like he was the one under pressure. He didn't want to lose to me. I have always believed in myself and that I can beat anyone on my day. I want to show what I can do now." The amateur will get a massive 30,000 pounds for reaching the second round, obviously the biggest payday of his career. Cahill will face Stephen Maguire in the second round, the player from Scotland defeated China's Tian Pengfei 10-9 in the first round. Ronnie O'Sullivan lost in the first round of the World Championship for the first time since 2003 and said that he had some health issues that prevented him from playing his best snooker. "I felt horrendous. I was struggling to stay awake," said the 43-year-old world number one. "I haven't felt great for a few weeks and I have not slept brilliantly the past couple of nights." Cahill started to play snooker as a child and his parents took him out of school at the age of 15 to help him focus on the sport. He did show some promise and in 2014 he defeated Ding Junhui to reach the fourth round of the UK Championship. However, after that remarkable result he failed to earn enough prize money to stay afloat and eventually decided to get a regular job and keep playing snooker as a hobby. Now he decided to give it another shot and earlier this season he defeated then world number one Mark Selby in the first round of the UK Championship. Cahill was not even born when O'Sullivan made his debut at the World Championship in 1993. Neil Robertson is currently the favourite to win the 2019 World Championship, he is 11/4 at Bet365 to lift the trophy, while James Cahill is 66/1 to go all the way at the 2019 Snooker World Championship.