Archive for October, 2009

This year’s Grand Prix substantialises what so many snooker lovers have discussed, feared and speculated about recently – that a generation change might very well be right ahead of us. This change involves more than just the age of players which would be obvious in any sport. It’s more about nationality of new players. The final of the 2009 Grand Prix, which is the third biggest ranking tournament, was played between two non-British players, something that has never happened before in the history of the tournament. Not only that, but this was only the second final ever in a ranking tournament between two players outside of the UK. Ding Junhui from China and Neil Robertson from Australia provided us with a very exciting end of a great tournament where Robertson finally managed to take the title.

Snooker has mainly been a sport for Britons ever since the first World Championship was played. All the professional ranking tournaments except for two are played somewhere in the UK. Unlike a lot of other sports, snooker has always had a majority of British players and thus most of the victories have naturally been British. As an example only three overseas players have won the World Championship since its introduction in 1927 – Horace Lindrum of Australia, Canadian Cliff Thorburn and Ken Doherty of Ireland.

In recent years, however, Australia and China in particular have contributed to the sport in terms of players. Neil Robertson has become the most successful player from outside of Britain when it comes to ranking tournament victories and Ding Junhui is not far behind. They’re both in the world top 16 and have won four and three ranking titles respectively. The success of non-British players is something that can be seen more and more frequently in snooker and people are beginning to get used to Chinese, Australian and Indian names among the many wildcards on the tour. The tournament preceding the Grand Prix, Shanghai Masters, saw Chinese youngster Liang Wenbo against Ronnie O’Sullivan in the final.  In last year’s UK Championship Marco Fu from Hong Kong made it to the final but lost 10-9 to Shaun Murphy and Robertson managed to reach the semi finals in both the World Championship and Welsh Open this year.  

It would only be a natural development of things if we saw even more overseas snooker players on the pro tour in the future. We’re not talking about a major surge that’s going to take over the entire game from British players overnight, but they’re coming. Most players and fans welcome this generation change. It’s good for the sport. More players from different parts of the world will hopefully mean more spectators and bigger enthusiasm for snooker which in turn will lead to more sponsors and higher quality of the game overall.