Keighley’s Chris Melling won his singles match as Europe took the second session of the 2012 Mosconi Cup by three points to two to leave the hosts and America level at 5-5 at the halfway stage before tonight’s third round of matches.

Melling outplayed Dennis Hatch to give the Europeans the lead for the first time in the event.

The boisterous crowd gave ‘The Hatchetman’ a run for his money and he seemed to lap it up but it was Melling who cashed in on Hatch’s errors to run out a 5-3 winner.

Shane Van Boening and Jonny Archer beat Darren Appleton and Niels Feijen 5-4 in the final match to leave the sides level pegging.

With America leading 3-2 from the first day’s play but underdogs at the start of the competition, there was a feeling that both teams would have been happy being tied at the end of Tuesday.

The Europeans got off to a bad start to the session though, as the English duo of Appleton and Melling lost a squeaker 5-4 to Mosconi legend Johnny Archer and Mike Dechaine.

The Americans had lead 4-2 before Europe clawed their way back into it with a pair of quality run outs. At 4-4 Dechaine broke, but Archer missed a fine cut on the one ball.

Melling was left with a full table pot on the one but it failed to drop and in the end Dechaine took the point with a 6/9 combination. That took the overall score to 4-2 in favour of the away team.

It put enormous pressure on European captain Johan Ruijsink as arguably his weakest player Nick Ekonomopoulos went out to face the pick of USA in Van Boening.

However, the nervy Greek debutant clearly hadn’t read the script as he powered to a 5-3 win to pull his team off the floor and set the York Hall on fire.

The match comes to a conclusion tomorrow night.