'Like one long soap opera' - Looking ahead to the 2022 World Snooker Championship at the Crucible
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Updated 04/04/2022 at 13:06 GMT
The showpiece event of the snooker season is almost upon as the World Snooker Championship is set to begin. Ahead of the April 16 start date however, there are ten days of gruelling qualifiers to see who will go toe-to-toe with the top 16 players in the world. Dave Hendon looks ahead to what promisies to be a thrilling few weeks of action.
Watch the moment Selby clinches fourth world title at Crucible
And so, this is it. After a season full of twists, turns and the unexpected, another World Championship is upon us.
A month from now, it will all be over and one of the 144 entrants will have achieved snooker immortality, either joining the roll of honour as a first time champion or enhancing their status within the game by winning it again.
The 17-day Crucible marathon, which begins on April 16th, is an endurance test for players, broadcasters and fans alike. But the championship starts today with ten days of qualifying which provide their own distinct drama.
The qualifiers are being played at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield, a few miles from the Crucible. Snooker’s theatre of dreams is within touching distance but, for most, the drive out of the city will be one of disappointment.
However, 16 players will advance to join the top 16 seeds in the first round draw. A total of four rounds will decide the line-up.
There are some big beasts standing in the way of hopefuls at the EIS, including former finalists Ding Junhui and Ali Carter, twice semi-finalist Stephen Maguire and the 2006 champion Graeme Dott. Fan Zhengyi and Joe Perry, who won the European Masters and Welsh Open respectively this season, will also be there, as will Shootout champion Hossein Vafaei and Dave Gilbert, who won the campaign-opening Championship League.
Legendary figures such as Jimmy White and Ken Doherty enter the fray in the early rounds while Marco Fu, twice a semi-finalist, is returning to action after spending two years in Hong Kong during the pandemic.
There are also four female players in the draw and a group of amateur players invited in to provide more of an international flavour.
Some players have the double-header of trying to qualify for the Crucible and keep their tour cards. Those in danger of relegation include twice World Championship runner-up Matthew Stevens, former Shootout winners Thepchaiya Un Nooh and Michael Holt and Eurosport commentator Dominic Dale.
All in all, it’s a recipe for ten days of high anxiety. Years ago, unless you went along to watch in person, these qualifiers passed by anonymously, fans only able to follow score updates on Teletext (younger readers should ask their parents what this is).
In recent times, live internet scoring made it possible to watch the points ticking over but now discovery+ and the Eurosport App will have all four tables live each session, with commentary on table 1. World Snooker Tour’s popular Judgement Day coverage returns for the final qualifying round.
So the World Championship is now a month long event with £500,000 to the winner on May 2nd. That money will be well earned.
The event has come a long way from humble beginnings. Billiards was the pre-eminent cue sport in Britain in the early 20th century and snooker was seen as something of a vulgar upstart.
In 1924, Tom Dennis, a player and billiard hall proprietor, wrote to the then governing body asking them to consider promoting a professional event for the new game. He received a sniffy reply: “It seems doubtful whether snooker is sufficiently popular to warrant the successful promotion of such a competition.”
Two years later, Joe Davis persuaded the powers that be to reconsider and a ten-man World Championship began in 1926, with Davis winning the title the following May. He used money from the entry fees to purchase the silver trophy still presented to the champion to this day.
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A general view outside the Crucible Theatre prior to the Betfred World Snooker Championship in Sheffield.
Image credit: Eurosport
Snooker’s fortunes ebbed and flowed before television interest began in the 1970s. In the last four decades the World Championship has become a popular fixture on the sporting calendar and these days attracts global attention.
Part of its appeal is its continuity, both the iconic venue and fixed calendar slot. April means Sheffield just as December means Christmas.
For so many snooker fans, it evokes memories of childhood. I first went to the Crucible as a 13 year-old. Like everyone else who has been there, I couldn’t believe how small it was compared to my perception based on watching TV coverage.
Stepping inside that theatre was like walking into a magical land. The match I saw was absolutely rotten, but this did not dent my enthusiasm.
We are often sentimental about sport because it provides a common thread throughout our lives, a soundtrack underscored by emotional highs and lows, joy and disappointment. We invest heavily in the fortunes of the players as they thrill, frustrate and amaze us in equal measure. And their achievements would be worth nothing if not for the profound effect they have on people they will never meet.
So many of us associate the great sporting moments with those loved ones with whom we shared them. They remind us of happy times and even rampant commercialism will not blunt sport’s power to bring people together.
Snooker is a sport which muscled its way into the big time. It didn’t come from public schools or universities. It was never the plaything of the establishment. It’s not athletic and often goes on late into the night. Its players tend to be rooted in working class life, ordinary guys made good.
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Mark Selby celebrates winning the 2021 World Championship
Image credit: Getty Images
For all these reasons it has been sneered at over the years, but cultural snobbery will not dim the enjoyment of millions around the world, for whom the coming month will mainly be spent putting a significant imprint into the sofa.
Could there be a shock winner this year? Only two qualifiers have prevailed as champion since the Crucible years began in 1977. Terry Griffiths won the title at his first attempt in 1979 while Shaun Murphy came through the pack in 2005.
The top 16 are a formidable group, but this season has seen so many upsets that there may just be one more waiting for us.
The fun is in finding out. The championship is like one long soap opera. There will be sessions that drag on so long you will question your sanity, but there will be moments which could live with you forever.
That is sport. Each day, from the first of qualifying to the last of the final, is another stitch in the grand tapestry of our biggest event.
So, snacks at the ready, it’s time to concentrate. No sleep ‘til May Day.
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