Shaun Murphy, the most consistent player on the tour this season, who has been frustrated by repeated narrow failures to win a tournament, completed a successful defence of the Malta Cup at the Portomaso Hilton Conference Centre last night.

Murphy comfortably beat Ken Doherty 9-3 in a final short of drama and quality, to collect the £20,000 first prize and his first trophy since a triumphant visit to the Mediterranean island last year.

Given that Doherty performed superbly to beat John Higgins 6-2 in one semi-final on Saturday and that Murphy was also entitled to be confident after his recovery from 3-0 adrift to beat Ding Junhui 6-5 in the other, the standard was unexpectedly low.

Doherty began brightly enough with a 91 break in the first frame but thereafter found fluency impossible as Murphy, despite being well below his best, pulled away. Without recourse to a single half-century, highly unusual for such a free scorer, Murphy led 5-2 entering the concluding session.

Having been the architect of many unlikely comebacks, including his escape from 8-5 down to beat Higgins 9-8 in the final of the 2006 Malta Cup, Doherty’s chances could not be written off, but after Murphy stole the 36-minute eighth frame on the blue it became one-way traffic.

Murphy will be among the favourites for the Welsh Open, the first world-ranking event of the year, which begins in Newport today.

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