Part two of the sport preview looks at the some "drunk men playing billiards" or at least it does in Jeremy Clarkson's world. It's the World Snooker Championships, of course.
The snooker season reaches its climax with the start of the World Championships at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield this weekend.
Three-time winner Ronnie O’Sullivan begins his title defence with a straight-forward-looking first round tie against world number 21 Stuart Bingham.
The title is considered by the bookmakers to be O’Sullivan’s to lose and William Hill has him as short as 9/4.
But this ignores the fact that no player has retained the championship since Stephen Hendry back in 1996.
In the twelve championships since then, there have been eight different winners, including relative outsiders Shaun Murphy in 2005 and Graeme Dott in 2006, making this one of the most open contests anywhere in sport.
In the most notable first round matches, Stephen Hendry faces Mark J Williams with nine world titles between them.
Hendry won the seventh, and to date, last World Championships in 1999 but has failed to win any major titles since.
Williams won his two World Championships in 2000 and 2003 but he has also suffered a drop in form and is currently ranked no 22 in the world.
Second favourite Stephen Maguire (15/2) faces a first round match against fellow Scotsman Jamie Burnett.
Both players will enter the Crucible arena under even more pressure than usual.
This is the first time they have met since Maguire beat Burnett 9-3 in the UK Championships last year.
The match is subsequently under investigation by World Snooker and even Strathclyde polie have opened an inquiry after a surge of bets on that exact result.
‘Interesting’ Steve Davis, winner of the title six times between 1981 and 1989, makes a highly commendable record 29th appearance at the Crucible.
The 51-year-old retains a top 32 ranking but is very much second favourite against Australian Neil Robertson, seeded tenth, in their first round match.
The full draw can be found here and the order of play here.
One person sure to make history is pretty Dunfermline lassie Michaela Tabb who will become the first female referee of the Final on May3-4 (best of 35 frames).
The earlier rounds take place as follows: First round (best of 19) – April 18-23, Second round (best of 25) – April 23-27, Quarter finals (best of 25) – April 28-29, and Semi finals (best of 33) – April 30-May 2.
Coverage is on BBC interactive every day from 10am.
No comments:
Post a Comment