Malta’s Tony Drago was eliminated from the Embassy world championship yesterday as he lost 10-5 to Stephen Lee.

Leading 6-3 overnight after Wednesday’s opening session, Lee completed his victory yesterday afternoon even if Drago appeared to be offering some resistance.

In actual fact, Lee maintained his dominance and won the opening two frames to take an 8-3 lead but the Valletta-born Drago hit back to win the next two frames to maintain his hopes.

In the 14th frame, Drago was careless in the opening stages when he did not check whether the black was pottable – it wasn’t – therefore giving Lee the opportunity to make his third century of the game – a 108 – to go 9-5 up.

In the final frame, Lee was again on top as he wrapped up the frame and the match setting a daunting clash with Peter Ebdon in the second round.

Frame scores (Lee first): 107-16 48-68 106-9 (100) 126-7 (126) 87-0 23-52 61-37 61-49 57-69 81-9 81-34 51-65 36-79 108-13 (108) 77-39.

Lee and Ebdon last met at Sheffield in the second round in 2001, when Ebdon infamously celebrated vigorously after potting a long black in the deciding frame which brought him close to the winning line.

"He has apologised to me since," added Lee, who beat Ebdon 9-8 in a gripping match at the Travis Perkins UK Championship in November. "It was a really tough match and I could understand him celebrating, but not to the extent that he did. It's hard enough losing 13-12 to anyone and that didn't help.

"The worst thing was that I had the whole summer to think about it and people kept mentioning it to me. He hasn't beaten me since then and I am bang up for this one.”

Also, Ian McCulloch was leading Graeme Dott 6-3 at the end of the first session while Stephen Hendry led Anthony Hamilton 6-2.