Coverage of the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible was stopped after an unexpected power outage at the Sheffield venue on Thursday night. The BBC, one of the broadcasters showing the tournament, was forced to cut its live feed from the theatre during Mark Allen and Chinese Wu Yize’s semi-final clash. Allen was 31-0 up in the third frame when the picture suddenly cut outGettyFans lost the pictures at 7:51pm and didn’t get it back for 12 minutes, by which time Allen had wrapped up the third frame to get off the mark in the match.Fans watching the coverage on BBC Two were greeted with a re-run of BBC programme Wild Isles while the problem was being rectified.Coverage eventually came back on BBC iPlayer and TNT, though BBC Two viewers had to wait a bit longer before their screens flickered back to life.While it was not an issue at the end of the BBC or TNT Sports, presenter Hazel Irvine issued an apology to frustrated viewers.“Welcome back to Sheffield and our apologies for the interruption to our evening at the Crucible in this second semi-final,” she said. “We had a rather unexpected power issue. Nothing to do with not feeding the meter I assure you.”She added: “So we lost power but Mark Allen did not. He took frame three to get his semi-final campaign under way.”Irvine added that the players had retired for their interval break, saying: “There was a big crash bang wallop in there and that led to the power surge which we think has led to the power going off.”Steve Davis, working as a pundit for the BBC, said: “It was obvious in the room here, when the screens went blank at home, that something had happened.“Lights went off. The cameras stopped filming players.“Mark Allen was aware something weird had happened and how good a performance to keep his standard up without getting confused by what was going on.Fans were deprived of their coverage for approximately 12 minutesGetty“There were people going, ‘what’s going on, where are we with it?’ Nobody knew what to do.“Then amazingly, it happened again. We heard it in the last frame. And he still kept his composure. That is somebody who is on point at the moment.”2026 World ChampionshipWe’re in the business end of the Crucible competition with just four names in with a chance of winning this year. The other semi-final sees 2005 winner Shaun Murphy take on four-time world champion John Higgins.