Sunday's Players Championship final will be a showdown between the reigning world champion, Kyren Wilson, and the current world number one, Judd Trump.
After Wilson showed all of his Crucible-conquering grit to come from behind and defeat Neil Robertson on Friday night, Trump produced a largely fluent display of heavy scoring to see off a battling John Higgins 6-4.
It means that surely the two best players in the game right now will do battle for the trophy, Trump seeking to win it for a third time and Wilson a first.
Trump was at times close to his blistering best on Saturday, laying down a marker with an opening-frame century and signing off the mini-session with another, this time a run of 126, to open up a 3-1 lead.
In-form Higgins responded with one of his own and clawed his way back to level at four frames apiece, but after breaking down when on the verge of leading for the very first time, Trump ruthlessly capitalised to move in front once more.
In fact that underplays the break which put Trump in front and in particular, an aggressive pot on the final green, running the cue ball up and down the table to land nicely on the brown, followed by a tricky blue to seal the frame.
At 5-4 ahead Trump was in control of things again and a half-century straight off the Higgins break set him on course to complete the job, which he did courtesy of a long red after Higgins had missed a similar opportunity with what proved to be his final shot.
Ahead of the final it's Trump who holds a narrow head-to-head lead in one of snooker's most fascinating rivalries, a battle of styles which had once been spiky but is now brimming with mutual respect.
Wilson though can take heart from the fact that he's won all three major finals against Trump, twice at the beginning of this season and once back in 2015, when the rivalry went up a notch with a deciding frame in Shanghai.
Only in Gibraltar during the pandemic spring of 2020 did Trump come out on top in what was a best-of-seven encounter, Wilson having held sway over the longer format – in fact the two ranking finals Trump has lost all season have both been to him.
Ticket-holders in Telford have every reason to expect these two to deliver a spectacle on Sunday.
