LIVINGSTONE: GIVE ME A BASH!
To be more precise, Steve Davis was always winning a snooker match on one of them.
Davis was simply too good to ever be loved by his whole audience.
The gambling classes that followed snooker fell for free-spirited chancers Jimmy White, Alex Higgins and Willie Thorne, who brought with them the wheeler-dealer charm of the backstreet clubs.
Thorne, who died last week aged 66, was as fluent a player as any. At the start of every frame, there was a real sense of anticipation that he might produce a magical maximum 147.
Nobody made more perfect breaks on the practice table, and pal Gary Lineker was on the receiving end of 38 of them at Thorne’s club in Leicester city centre.
Thorne told me Lineker once made a break of 132 against him, but the England star mostly spent their matches watching Thorne pot balls.
Under the TV lights, Willie could wobble – noticeably in the 1985 UK Championship Final.
Thorne had the invincible Davis at his mercy – but then missed the simplest of blues.
“My legacy is that blue,” said Thorne, whose only major success was at the Classic months earlier.
“At the time, I was one of the best players in the world, but I doubted
LIAM LIVINGSTONE is a modern enigma of cricket, a power-hitting batsman snapped up by teams in the IPL and Big Bash, but forever overlooked by England.
The 26-year-old suffered another disappointment last week when he missed out on the 30-man squad chosen by England after being involved in an initial 55-player training myself for two or three years after that blue – it dented my confidence.”
There were no tantrums afterwards, just a shrug of the shoulders and a shake of the head. Thorne was a rarity. He wasn’t just a nice bloke when the cameras were on – he was just a nice bloke, full stop.
“Willie was too nice,” said a friend. “People would group. It has not dampened his ambition to play Test cricket. It has not diminished his resolve to prove he is good enough – that he is much more than just a T20 mercenary gun for hire.
So far, Livingstone has just two T20 appearances for England to his name, in the summer of 2017, when he failed to make an impression.
“I don’t think I was picked too early, but the timing was sponge off him all the time. Friends would run up huge bar bills at hotels and give the staff Willie’s room number.
“Willie was too soft to say anything and he had the money to pay, so he would just pay the bill.”
Thorne was all too often spotted coming out of a bookmakers – and only he knew how much that addiction cost him.
He was banned from York races after losing wrong in the sense that I wasn’t in a great place with my game mentally then,” said the Lancashire star.
“If you go into that environment when you don’t have confidence in your game it doesn’t help too much.
“I have matured since then. If the opportunity arises again, I feel like I’m a totally different person and totally different cricketer. I’m only 26. I have a lot of years left. I feel £250,000 in a few days and said in his autobiography he once lost £150,000 on a football match.
Thorne won £5,000 betting that Lineker would score first in the 1986 FA Cup Final for Everton against Liverpool – but ended up a loser after the Reds ran out 3-1 winners.
If he had a hunch, Thorne would lump thousands on it. He was known as ‘Mr Maximum’ – and lived his life to the full.
Lineker once had a 132 break, but mostly watched Thorne pot balls
that scoring runs in red-ball cricket is more satisfying than with the white ball.
“I average 42 in first-class cricket which not many English batsmen around at the moment do.
“I do feel that I have the game for Test cricket.
“I want to play at Test level for England, but I want to travel around these big competitions and try to make a name for myself in them as well.”