EYES ON MAKING HISTORY
China’s snooker ‘flagbearer’ Ding bids to deliver world title
Chinese cueman Ding Junhui may not have had a great season but the whole of China and many neutral observers are hoping him to go one better than last year and become Asia’s first world champion.
The 30-year-old, who lost to Mark Selby in the 2016 final, begins his campaign against compatriot 19-yearold Zhou Yuelong on Monday with the championship itself getting going on Saturday in what is the 40th year of the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield hosting the sport’s showpiece.
“Ding has been one of the fundamental reasons why snooker has got so big,” Barry Hearn, chairman of world snooker, told the BBC. “He has been the flagbearer of Chinese snooker for the past 10 to 12 years.
“He’s inspired hundreds of thousands of Chinese snooker players and brought the game into the living rooms of the entire population.”
Ding rose to fame in 2005, when he was 18 years old, by beating seventime world champion Stephen Hendry in the final of the China Open.
Ding, who has the one ranking tournament win to his credit this season, the Shanghai Masters, and reached the final of the International Championship, has proved an inspiration to many young Chinese.
Not least 17-year-old Yan Bingtao, who made his way through qualifying to set up a meeting with 2005 world champion Shaun Murphy.
“I picked up the cue all because of watching him,” said Yan.
“He is like an elder brother to all of us. We worship him,” added Yan, who will be the first player born in this century to participate in the world championship.
Five-time champion Ronnie O’Sullivan also believes China’s inevitable rise in the sport.
“By 2025, you’ll probably see the majority of the winners being Chinese,” he said.
“The usual set of suspects will be there – Selby, Murphy, [ Judd] Trump, Kyren Wilson. But other than that I think it will be pretty Chinese dominated.”
O’Sullivan, whose last world title came in 2013 when he successfully defended his crown, begins against Gary Wilson, who is one of five debutants. The question as on so many occasions is which O’Sullivan will turn up.
The 41-year-old has of late been giving one-word answers at press conferences and even started singing Oasis hit “Wonderwall.”
O’Sullivan, who beat Joe Perry to take a record seventh Masters title this season after losing to Selby in the UK Championship final, is nevertheless a dream draw for 31-year-old journeyman Wilson.
Selby, who has proven to be something of a nemesis for O’Sullivan beating him in the 2010 Masters final and depriving him of a world title “threepeat” in 2014, will meet Irish veteran Fergal O’Brien.
Selby, whose patient play once earned him the derogatory nickname “The Torturer” from O’Sullivan, will be up against a man who has made the record books with the longest frame in professional snooker history which earned him his date with the two-time champion.