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Eurosport commentators Mike Hallett and David Hendon offer their thoughts on the semi-finals of the Bahrain Championship.

Mike Hallett: We're down to the semi-final stage: Matthew Stevens versus Stephen Hendry and young Mark Allen against Neil Robertson.

Mark Allen played terrifically last night (Thursday), with three centuries, and it's nice to see Matthew Stevens back in a semi-final because he has been struggling of late. It'll be a good clash between him and Stephen Hendry.

It's difficult to pick who will win: Stephen is 11-8 up on the head-to-heads and the way he has been playing, I would go with him to win this afternoon. He's got to keep that consistency up though.

Neil Robertson I thought was very good yesterday (Thursday) against Stephen Maguire. He looked pretty strong and he's got better and better as he's gone on this week.

Whether this is a step too far for young Allen I'm not sure; but I'm going to go for a Hendry-Robertson final.

Looking at the last four Hendry has got to fancy his chances of winning the title this weekend. He's got this far and he'll be thinking that this semi-final is as good as the final.

I hope all four players play to their full potential.

David Hendon: I think Stephen Hendry has been excellent, the best he's played for years. Last season he played well in one match and badly in the next, but so far in this one he has played brilliantly from the start - as good as he ever has played. I expect him to beat Matthew.

It's a big test for Matthew, who hasn't been quite as good as Stephen so far.

It's the first time we see Allen on the telly - he's played all his matches on the other table - he's obviously been playing well.

He's the only player left not to win a ranking event - I expect him to win one soon and I think he will beat Robertson.

Robertson played very well last night though and it was interesting to see how good his safety was. I said before the match that there wouldn't be much safety, but there was a lot - and it was very good.

Allen plays very quickly and if he gets on a run early on he could blow him away. He's more Alex Higgins than Dennis Taylor, if you know what I mean.

The standard has been very good - it is a good semi-final line-up.

Jonathan Symcox / Eurosport