FORMER world champion Mark Williams admitted he will find his shock Crucible exit difficult to come to terms with.

The Welshman was dumped out of the Embassy World Championship by Anthony Hamilton in their second round tie yesterday.

Hamilton held the upper hand throughout the contest and held on to book a last eight date with Peter Ebdon with a 13-9 win.

Williams, from Cwm, said: "I just can't seem to get any form going at all. At the moment, I enjoy practising more than playing matches. At least I play a bit better in practice.

"The next time I pick my cue up will be in the league in Scotland somewhere, but I might not even go into that to be honest. I think I'm just going to get drunk for a couple of weeks after this defeat.

"I'm going away next month and I've got a new car coming which will ease the pain a bit."

Hamilton's victory avenged his narrow loss to the same player in the China Open final in Shanghai earlier this year.

Hamilton, who led 8-5 in that match before losing 9-8, said: "It makes up for the final. If I'd lost today, I would have had to retire!

"Mark is the sort of player you don't want when you've got a big lead. He starts to open his shoulders a bit and he started to cue quite well in the end, which got me a bit twitchy.

"I think that I am back to the form of a couple of years ago. I haven't seen the scoresheet but I think I scored heavily in the match.

"I must have made a frame-winning break in every frame I won, which is good. This is my game. If I can score heavily someone's going to have to play really well to beat me.

"But my safety game was also pretty good as well, so that's a good combination."

Meanwhile Graeme Dott believes defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan is the only man capable of halting John Higgins' charge towards the title.

The world number 14 slumped to a heavy 13-2 defeat to Higgins yesterday and described the Scot's performance as "the best I've ever seen".

The 'Wizard of Wishaw' was in top form and almost capped a superb display with a maximum 147 clearance.

He manoeuvred the cue ball around expertly in the second frame of the session before misjudging a shot on the 14th black.

However, he still managed to register five century breaks during the tie to take his tournament total to eight.

Dott said: "Even watching snooker on television, I've never seen anybody play as well as that, as consistent as that.

"There are only two frames I can think of where I threw it away and one of them was the eighth.

"He was absolutely incredible. I think there is really only one man that has a chance of beating him and that's Ronnie.

"It's really a two-horse race, I don't care what anybody else says. Nobody can compete with that.

"I know a lot of people will say that he wasn't put under any pressure, but I never got the chance to put him under any pressure.

"Every safety I was tight on the cushion. And, given a chance, I knew he was going to clear up."

Scotsman Higgins plays Carmarthen's Matthew Stevens in the last eight and the winner of that match will face either Peter Ebdon or Hamilton.

O'Sullivan is in the other half of the draw and must beat Stephen Lee, from Wiltshire, to set up a last-four clash with the winner of the former champions clash between seven times Crucible king Stephen Hendry and Ireland's Ken Doherty.