World Snooker Championship 2018: Barry Hawkins knocks out tournament favourite Ding Junhui

Hawkins took an 11-5 lead into the final session and wasted no time in securing the two frames required to reach the last four

Hawkins has an excellent record at the Crucible but is yet to go all the way (Getty)

Barry Hawkins booked his place in the semi-finals of the Betfred World Championship with a ruthless demolition of third seed Ding Junhui.

Hawkins took an 11-5 lead into the final session at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield and wasted no time in securing the two frames required to reach the last four.

The 39-year-old left-hander won a scrappy 17th frame as a woefully out-of-sorts Ding continued to miss easy balls, but then finished a surprisingly one-sided contest in style with a break of 117.

Hawkins has now reached the semi-finals or better in five of the last six years, but was not about to take anything for granted ahead of a semi-final against either Mark Williams or Ali Carter.

Ding could do nothing to stop Hawkins progressing (PA)

"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."