Snooker’s New Master
















Does the all Asian-final of one of the toughest competitions on the calendar predict a future swing to the East?

Sunday evening saw the first all-Asian final in World Snooker. In the prestigious Ladbrokes Mobile Masters, held annually at the Wembley Arena, Ding Junhui of China comprehensively defeated Marco Fu of Hong Kong by 10 frames to 4. The game has since sparked a furore of speculation amongst Snooker insiders and experts on the possible future regularity of all-Asian, or more specifically, all-Chinese finals.

Undoubtedly, this is great news for the game. Despite its tradition in the British Isles and Ireland, it has never truly succeeded in penetrating sporting habits elsewhere in the world. Snooker is a sport that has always seemed destined to centre on the quintessentially British pub culture. But Sunday’s Masters final suggests this is all changing. 

The recent development of the Chinese love for snooker is sparking discussion about the landscape of the game in the future. Seven-time World Champion Stephen Hendry commented on Sunday that it is likely that half of the World’s top 16 players will be Chinese in ten years time, and his colleagues at the BBC displayed optimistic agreement. It is estimated that over 100 million Chinese people tuned in to watch Sunday’s final.

Of course, it is inevitable that as China continues to modernise and match Western nations in terms sporting infrastructure, the nature of the size of its population will undoubtedly produce world-beaters in all sports. Furthermore, the developed nations of the Far East have an admirable tendency for fanatical support, and this has apparently grown to include a sport that has so far failed in its export from the British archipelago. Australian Neil Robertson’s World Championship victory last year made him the first overseas player to win at the Crucible since Cliff Thorburn in 1983, but it is still considered relatively unlikely that the game will take off in any big way in Australasia.

Even before this year’s Masters began in early January, the sport’s biggest star Ronnie O’Sullivan was predicting a Chinese revolution. The Rocket was quoted as saying: “I think it could be takeover one day,” and rightfully predicted the victory of World No. 4 Ding Junhui in this year’s Masters. And O’Sullivan warned his British compatriots that they would have to up their game to continue producing the talent to challenge the unquestionable population advantage of the Chinese: “It’s a numbers game. In China they have 100 million or a billion people, statistically it's in their favour.” The grassroots opportunities for budding, young Chinese cueists is reported to be considerably healthier than those in Britain, so it appears that World Snooker’s Chairman Barry Hearn has a tough job ahead trying to maintain British and Irish influence on the World scene.
 
After its relatively recent ascendancy in last decade, China already holds three prominent events on the Snooker calendar. The country is host to two ranking events, the Shanghai Masters and the China Open, and the non-ranking Wuxi Classic. And this meteoric rise comes at a time when the game is suffering financially in Britain. World Snooker depends on sponsorships, and the Chinese market has no shortage of corporations wanting to cash in on the sport’s golden popularity. So as Snooker’s popularity in Britain slowly declines, the move to the East provides welcome financial reinforcement to the World Professional Billiards & Snooker Association (WPBSA).

Aside from Sunday’s finalists, Liang Wenbo of China makes up the trio of the Asian contingent in the top 40, ranked at No. 24. The scattering of Asian players further up the rankings remains sparse, with an additional 4 Chinese and 3 Thai players in the top 100, but the weight of popularity suggested by recent viewing figures hints at a new generation of players emerging from the Far East.