Dott shocks force early interval

Six seeds have already lost at the Betfair World Championship but it was an entirely different sort of shock affecting a former Crucible champion on Friday morning.

Graeme Dott, who triumphed in Sheffield in 2006, complained of static shocks early in the second session of his last-16 tussle with 2005 champion Shaun Murphy.

They left the arena after three frames, taking an early interval to allow tournament officials to address the issue. It appeared Murphy was untroubled but on several occasions a bemused Dott was clearly affected, notably whenever he had to play shots from close to the cushion.

As the players headed for their dressing rooms, a tournament official sprayed the carpet of the stage floor with water in an attempt to remedy the problem.

Ken Doherty, the 1997 world champion, said on BBC2: "I've never seen this. It's quite strange only Graeme Dott is getting the static from the table.

"I don't know whether it's his shoes but they're going to have a break and see if they can do something about the carpet.

"I've never seen this at the Crucible. Maybe he has to change his shoes."

Murphy, armed with a 6-2 overnight lead in the best-of-25-frames match, dropped the opening two frames of the morning but hit back with a break of 65 in the next to take a 7-4 advantage.