‘O’Sullivan Show’ gets physical as Rocket bows out
IT might have caused even the late, great Ted Lowe to raise his voice above a whisper.
An extraordinary incident was caught on BBC television cameras this weekend when Ronnie O’Sullivan shoulder-barged Ali Carter during their World Snooker Championship match in Sheffield.
It gave snooker a moment of controversy and drama rarely seen since the long-gone days when the Crucible was an essential part of the nation’s sporting life.
There had been some bad blood around the second-round match anyway, with Carter criticising his opponent for prima donna-ish behaviour in the dressing-rooms and World Snooker for running “the Ronnie O’Sullivan show”.
The fact of the matter is that TV snooker is indeed the Ronnie O’Sullivan show – he being the only player who now matters to the large majority of viewers.
The old adage that no player is bigger than the sport is as illapplied here as when they charged double on the gate if WG Grace was batting, or when Muhammad Ali made medicine sick.
O’Sullivan (right) is not only the greatest, he is the most fascinating. As he told the press after bowing out 13-9 to Carter: “Until I die, you will have to keep writing stuff about me. You want to highlight something like this. I would rather choose to highlight something that is really important, like young children being bombed to death every day. Think of Syria, think of the terrible things going on in the world and we are sitting talking about a shoulder barge.”
The moment goes immediately into any Ronnie greatest hits package, alongside the left-handed Robidoux wind-up, sitting under a towel, playing in his socks, and the particularly enjoyable “pretending to be a robot” phase.
The partial surprise was that O’Sullivan, an exceptional unsettler of opponents in addition to his other gifts, seemed the man more rattled.
While the right noises were made about player conduct, one cannot help but think that snooker’s authorities were not too disappointed about a bit of argy-bargy.
The real surprise is that it does not happen more often. Snooker is proud of the way players call a foul on themselves; combined with the waistcoats, this gives the illusion of it being a gentlemanly affair.
In fact, it is among the most savage of sports in the way one player can dominate another, while the grind of the circuit allows no escape from your tormentor.
At least David Moyes, for instance, only has to put up with that sort of a hiding from Pep Guardiola once a year, or perhaps twice if he lasts longer than expected in any given hotseat. It is often said that tennis, behind boxing, is the most gladiatorial of sports, but snooker more than any other game allows one man the cruel delight of truly cooking someone slowly, dismantling an opponent’s game and mindset over several hours or even two days.
Elsewhere, John Higgins matched the record for the biggest winning margin in a second round tie as he booked his place in the quarter-finals with a crushing 13-1 win over Jack Lisowski. (© Daily Telegraph, London)