Ronnie O’Sullivan, John Higgins and a magical 24-year rivalry unique to sport

It is probably fitting to be evergreen on the green baize even if professional snooker has no room for sentiment.

When it is your time, it is your time. The aging process, terminal loss of form and the rise of younger, hungrier foes tend to drag you kicking and screaming from the sport when you are on the decline. Whether you like it or not.

It is a fact of life that has already bamboozled sadly retired icons such as Stephen Hendry, who lifted the last of his seven world championships in Sheffield aged 30, and Steve Davis, who had to grapple with an obvious loss of consistency in his 30s after winning a sixth and final world title in 1989.

Snooker's shot clock remains unforgiving. Yet there are those who seem to be strangely protected by some sort of time-reversing emollient, a magical elixir that means age will not wither them.

The sight of Ronnie O’Sullivan and John Higgins contesting a major snooker final does not sound like anything out of the blue amid their addiction to potting blacks

With nine world titles, eight UK Championships and eight Masters between them, it might sound a bit like the norm for two figures who have become public faces and multi-millionaires on the back of mastering the curious art of potting balls with a wooden stick.

Then you consider their longevity, and you begin to appreciate such greatness is far from standard fare. A bit like the exceptional tariff they place on their somewhat peculiar calling in lives.

Both men turned professional in 1992, have a combined age of 81 and contested their first and last World Championship 15 years ago which O’Sullivan won 18-14 for the first of his five world titles.

Not only are they rolling back the years, they also continue to roll in the balls with no signs of decline or decrepitness normally associated with their third decade in the sport.

They were sent to Coventry over the past few days to illustrate why they both remain very special.

The invitational Champion of Champions final at the Ricoh Area was won 10-7 on Saturday by an imperious Higgins, who catapulted Shaun Murphy, Judd Trump and Ding Junhui, three of the finest in the sport, on his way to lifting his second title in successive weekends.

Six days earlier, the man from Wishaw in Scotland carried off the China Championship with a 10-7 victory over Stuart Bingham where he made three successive centuries in the final three frames.

The reward for back-to-back successes in such a cut-throat environment, snags Higgins £300,000. He shows no signs of going under before the next stop on the tour takes him to the Titanic Exhibition Centre in Belfast today for this week’s Northern Ireland Open.

When O’Sullivan and Higgins decided to pursue snooker all those years ago, Bill Clinton was on the cusp of becoming president of the USA, Prince Charles and Di were about to split, Czechoslovakia was still a country and Windsor Castle went up in flames in a year the Queen described as an "annus horribilis".

There are not many figures in professional sport who continue to burn brightly at a point in their sporting lives when they are supposed to be on the wane.

O'Sullivan and Higgins first met in a final at the 1995 Masters at Wembely which O’Sullivan won 9-3. Little did they know back then that they would be as sharp as ever 21 years on.

Little did they know in 2012, they would be back at this level. Higgins has admitted himself that he entered the doldrums when his confidence deserted him a year after he lost his dad John Senior to cancer.

After lifting the Shanghai Masters in 2012, Higgins had to wait until the Welsh Open in 2015 for his next ranking event success. He enjoyed further titles at the 2015 Australian Open and International Championship in China to re-establish himself as a major force.

O’Sullivan somehow managed to go three years without winning a ranking event after the Shanghai Masters in 2009, but lifting the German Masters in 2012 provided him with the impetus to win two more world titles, two Masters, the UK Championship and two Champion of Champions.

In Saturday’s final, Higgins made breaks of 75, 74, 79, 65, 60, 63 and 83 before pushing over the line with closing runs of 76, 86 and 58.

O’Sullivan, the greatest player snooker has produced, continues to flower on such occasions with a technique as formidable as granite. He lost despite knocking in 68, 88, 90, 61, 74 and 130. It is the second final he has appeared In successive months having lost 9-8 to Trump in the European Masters final in Romania.

It is only a matter of when his next title comes along after he demolished Mark Allen in the last four with a 6-2 win that included three sparkling 100 plus knocks.

Over 655 frames between them over 24 years, O’Sullivan has won 337 with Higgins on 318. O’Sullivan has won 30 of their matches, Higgins 26 with three draws in the old Premier League format.

The levels they reached at the Ricoh Arena were as immaculate as they have ever struck the ball so well with fast break-building, long potting and intricate tactical play the bedrock of a truly absorbing public tete-a-tete.

You can get 20/1 on Higgins winning a fifth world title next May while O'Sullivan is favourite at 9/2.

There are no other players in any professional sport playing as well over such a quarter of a century. The lesson to be learned is valuable: if you are old enough, you are good enough.

When O'Sullivan and Higgins are on it, they simply remain a breed apart. They remain unique sportsmen who are measured in decades rather than years.