Judd Trump panned his own performance as the world number one’s title defence at the UK Championship was halted at the first hurdle by qualifier Mark Joyce last night.

A year after landing the biggest title of his burgeoning career at York’s Barbican Centre, Trump was on the painful end of one of the biggest upsets in the tournament’s history, the world number one losing 6-5 to 50th-ranked Joyce after at one stage holding a 5-2 lead.

Trump said: “I should never play that bad. You’ll never see another world number one play as badly as that.”

He had made a 104 break in the second frame and was doing enough, it seemed, to set up a second-round clash with Ali Carter, but Joyce had other ideas and the long road back from the brink of defeat had the biggest victory of his career at its end.

“It’s just a bad performance. It was going to come sooner or later,” said 23-year-old Trump, the man tipped in recent days by many, including Stephen Hendry, to be the dominant force in snooker for the next decade.

“He played all right in the last four frames but he’ll have to raise his game a lot to get close to Ali Carter.”