He beat David Gray to qualify for the 2003 World Championship in a clash between players who share their names with musicians, and went on to reach the quarter finals in 2004. He went one stage further in 2005, losing 14–17 to Matthew Stevens in the semi-final, beating Graeme Dott, Mark Williams and Alan McManus en route. He was ranked number 16 in the rankings in &lt;a href="Snooker%20world%20rankings%202005/2006"&gt;2005/2006 season&lt;/a&gt;, which would normally guarantee a seeding in the ranking tournaments, but was unluckily pushed out by Shaun Murphy, who as the current world champion was not in top 16 of the rankings, and was seeded before him in tournaments.