In praise of snooker
Lloyd England/Creative Commons
I'm one of those who first got hooked on snooker in the 1980s, when the snooker boom was a strange undercurrent of Thatcherism: many of us wasted too much time back then watching Steve Davis, usually hoping his opponent would win. I was inspired to join Warrington's 147 club, not one of the Meccas of the snooker world perhaps, but a fine enough place to learn where to put the white, sink a few pints and see how much illumination a 5p piece will buy you - and it was 5p in those days. Since then I've played at the Oxford Union (somewhat drunkenly) and memorably with an old girlfriend in Simla, and though I've got no better - my highest break, at 17, is pretty pathetic, though my safety is not bad - I remain in thrall to the smell of blue chalk, the feel of green baize cloth, the click of cue ball against object ball and the slidy, clacky accounting of the do-it-yourself scoreboard.
I'm reminded of all this because, in addition to all the other distractions that will torture my writing life this week and next is added snooker's world championship in Sheffield. Snooker's going through a second golden age at the moment: in recent years the championship has been more absorbing than ever. Unlike the dull days of the eighties and nineties when the winner was easily predicted, there are many potential champions at Sheffield. Ronnie O'Sullivan, the game's unpredictable genius, is probably the best man on his day. But even after the loss of Graeme Dott and Ken Doherty there remain a number of former champions - Shaun Murphy, John Higgins, the amazing mental strongman Peter Ebdon - who might do it again this time. And there are many potential first-time winners, too - Ding Junhui, for example, or another Chinese wunderkind Liang Wenbo, or the Scot Stephen Maguire. It's a pity Paul Hunter died young, or the field would have been even stronger than it is.
Form oscillates these days, which makes life especially interesting: Mark Williams, twice world champion and at times over the last decade seemingly unbeatable, sank to world number 40 recently and is only now putting his game together. Mark Selby, who broke through last year to become one of the very top players, this year is knocked out in the first round - but I expect him to be back. No one knows which Ronnie O'Sullivan will turn up on match day, the self-destructive one, or simply the destructive one.
What a brilliant game! Rack up the reds, and kiss that green.
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