Rejuvenated class of '92 inspire snooker's greatest era: O'Sullivan, Higgins and Williams

From the golden generation, comes a golden era. The curious narrative of the green baize has become a sort of Benjamin Button with snooker balls courtesy of its glistening potting triumvirate.

Ronnie O’Sullivan, John Higgins and Mark Williams, the world's top three this year, have a combined age of 126, but a collective snooker brain of about half that.

The older they get, the younger they get. Weird, but also wonderful for those of you out there who rage against the dying of the light. If the 1980s was snooker's heyday in the UK, snooker is at its zenith in 2018.

O’Sullivan, Higgins and Williams, three blokes 21 years short of making up a combined age of 147, have never performed better encased by some sort of time-defying emollient and a genuine desire to improve.

Eight out of the season’s 16 ranking tournaments have been gobbled up by WHO at 42? It is not melodramatic to suggest the ongoing class of '92 – the year when they started out as professionals – are holding up better at the table than Paul Newman as 'Fast Eddie' Felson. And he was fictional.

O’Sullivan is officially enjoying his best season collecting a career-best haul of four titles at the English Open, Shanghai Masters, UK Championship and World Grand Prix.

He is number one in the world this season by some margin having earned over half a million quid with 63 centuries so far carrying him to a career haul of 930.

No country for young men? O'Sullivan is targeting two more world titles in his 40s to equal Stephen Hendry's record of seven.

"Perhaps 40 is the new 25," he has commented.

After a seemingly terminal decline since his peak of world titles in 2000 and 2003, Williams is blooming like a Welsh daffodil. He ended a seven-year drought to win the Northern Ireland Open with a 9-8 win over Yan Bingtao in November before waltzing to his 20th career title with a 9-1 victory over Graeme Dott at the German Masters last month.

Higgins usurped Barry Hawkins 9-7 to earn a fifth Welsh Open and 30th ranking title on Sunday night, 23 years after he first reached the final of the event. He has also lifted the Indian Open title less than a year after becoming the oldest World Championship finalist aged 41 since Ray Reardon in 1982.

Higgins attributes the expanded snooker tour for saving and extending his career because he is no longer having to isolate himself for practice sessions when he is playing so much. When you study six-times world champion Steve Davis aged 39 winning the Masters in 1997 for his final major victory or Hendry's toil in his 30s before retiring at age of 43 in 2012, it is remarkable to witness snooker become a game for true greats.

Higgins told me back in 2009 a day after lifting the third of his four world crowns, that "when you get to your late 30, early 40s, it will naturally become more difficult with the amount of talent pushing through". Yet he continues to compete at the highest levels due to a technique made in Scotland from girders.

A holy timeless trilogy with 11 world titles between them are rewriting the record books on what can be achieved beyond the previously slippery slope of 40 with a load of balls and a snooker cue as Chas & Dave sung back in its 1980s pomp.

The world might have been going snooker loopy back in those days of mullets, shoulder pads and shell suits, but the game of snooker has never been more credible.

Out of the top 30 heaviest century makers in the history of the sport, only Hendry, Davis and John Parrott have retired.

With a golden generation growing golder in their third decade, snooker boasts genuine forces of nature in world champion Mark Selby, Judd Trump, Ding Junhui, Shaun Murphy, Mark Allen and Neil Robertson. None of them are in the first flush of youth.

There is also a supporting cast that includes serious rising Chinese talent led by Bingtao as the sport suddenly houses serious prize money.

If O’Sullivan wins a sixth world title in May, he snares £425,000 and becomes the first man to earn £1m on the table in a season. But Higgins or Williams carrying off the old pot would not be a surprise given how this season is unravelling.

It is a glorious sight indeed in any sport to witness maturing talent make good on their late promise.

Life begins at 40? In snooker, life begins beyond 40. And the final frame, the final black is some way off being sunk for the perpetual potters.