Mark Selby paid tribute to Ronnie O’Sullivan after ending his 16-match winning run with a 6-0 win at the Players Championship.

Selby was in blistering form against O’Sullivan who hadn’t lost a match since he was beaten by Zhang Anda in China 103 days ago.

Since then, The Rocket has won the last three tournaments he had entered including the first two Triple Crown events of the season.

But Selby, whose season has not gone as expected, pulled off a masterstroke in emphatically beating O’Sullivan in their 29th career meeting.

After bursting into a 4-0 lead at the interval, Selby returned to take the next two frames and complete an unlikely whitewash.

However, in the final frame, Selby appeared to play for a snooker on the last red.

During his ITV4 post-match interview, pundit Stephen Hendry said to Selby: "You had an interesting choice with the last red because you could have played for it but you decided to play for the snooker on the last red."

Selby admitted it was a mistake, responding: "I didn't mean to play for the snooker but I just over screwed the red in the middle too much.

"I wanted to play higher on the black and then play it down because I felt confident."

Selby later paid tribute to his opponent and told Hendry that he would never have played the snooker on purpose.