Kent’s Barry Hawkins qualified for the World Championship semi-finals after a dominant 13-5 win over a struggling Ding Junhui in the last eight.

Ding Junhui started the day’s play trailing Barry Hawkins 11-5, and Hawkins, from Ditton near Maidstone, swiftly took the first frame of the morning’s session before quickly claiming victory with another with a century break.

Hawkins will face the winner of Mark Williams and Ali Carter’s tie.

Without ever needing to find top gear, 2013 finalist Hawkins produced a professional performance as China’s leading player and third seed Ding largely fell apart in the second session having trailed 5-3 from the morning session on Tuesday.

Hawkins move effortlessly from 5-3 to 8-3 ahead with knocks of 60, 73 and 76 before Ding compiled 102 and 52 to briefly reignite his hopes by recovering to 8-5 behind.

But Hawkins made his dominance count against the 2016 finalist as a break of 63 in the 14th frame and a closing effort of 113 left him on the cusp of a second successive semi-final at the sport’s biggest event.

“I’m in the semis but there’s still such a long way to go and there’s still some great players in,” Hawkins told the BBC.

“I’m not getting too excited, I’ve been here before and I know what it’s like to go out there and play terrible so it can happen at any time.

“I’m obviously over the moon to get through and I thought I played pretty well. I felt like he gave up at the end there.

“I thought I punished him every time he made a mistake and when someone’s doing that against you, it’s easy to start to missing a few and I managed to keep him under a bit of pressure because he hadn’t been until then.

“There’s a lot on his shoulders as well.”

Since losing to Ronnie O’Sullivan in the 2013 final, Hawkins has reached the semi-finals in 2014, 2015 and 2017 while also making the quarters in 2016.