I confess to being very excited about this tournament at the beginning. Cambridge-based Aussie Neil Robertson had been in imperious form for large parts of the season, and was edging ever-closer to becoming the first player in history to make 100 century breaks in a season. Ronnie was the favourite as always, but surely if anyone could beat him, it was Neil? And we also had Gentleman Joe Perry in the draw, with a potential Ronnie-killing on the cards in round 2. Plus an in-form Ding, an improving Judd Trump, and a 90s throwback first-rounder between Higgins and McManus. It was set to be an absolute cracker, as Dennis would say.
And I have to say it met, if not exceeded expectations. Robertson was starting fairly slowly before turning it on in the final session of each of his matches to make the semis, most notably his last 16 performance which opponent Mark Allen described as the best anyone has ever played against him, ever. (Although the Thunder from Down Under did twice fall in the nineties looking for that 100th century). He finally got the milestone against Trump in another immaculate final session, and emotionally described it as being far better than a Crucible 147. Perry ran Ronnie close before losing the last four frames to go down 13-11 (John Virgo lavished Joe with praise with the startling line “that’s one thing Joe Perry can do, he can pot a ball”). McManus beat Higgins to set up a mouth-watering (kind of) clash with Ken Doherty in the last 16. Ding was the big loser – in a fairly kind quarter of the draw, he never got going and bowed out 10-9 to Michael Wasley.
In one of my less successful predictions, I asserted that Shaun Murphy was the player most likely to be able to defeat O’Sullivan, but he missed a lot of easy balls at crucial moments and exited meekly at the quarter-final stage, 13-3. I like Murphy a lot, but there is a fine line between honesty and defeatism when it comes to playing Ronnie, and his pre-match comments about how amazing Ronnie is, how if he plays his best then no-one can beat him etc, in hindsight may have indicated he wasn’t in the best frame of mind to pull off the upset. Murphy at his best would have run O’Sullivan very close, the latter still not quite hitting his straps despite the comfortable margin of victory.
It was last year’s runner-up Barry Hawkins that made it through the Ding-less second quarter of the draw. Last year he had to get past Ding and Selby, but he had a slightly more smoothly-paved path this time around, taking out David Gilbert, Dominic Dale (just) and, in a repeat of last year’s semi, Ricky Walden. He showed remarkable guts in his ballsy final frame decider against Dale, but apart from that he was no more than best-of-the-rest and couldn’t stay with Ronnie in their semi-final.
The other semi was much less predictable, with Robertson taking on the Jester from Leicester, Mark Selby (he’s not remotely jester-like, but is from Leicester. If it was darts, he’d at least wear a hat with bells on or something). Selby had been tested early on by Michael White and Ali Carter, and had got through on temperament more than anything, and of course his much-vaunted “matchplay snooker”. I could write a whole blog about the frustrating TV commentary and summarising, especially the smug, self-important Willie Thorne and the the-obvious-stating and catchphrase-overusing John Virgo (its going right over there towards the corner you idiot), but this term has got me particularly wound-up. Its not “matchplay snooker”, its just “snooker”. OK? Right. Back to the second semi…
As ding-dong battles go, this was amongst the dongiest. Selby was not at his most fluent, but was showing signs of hitting top form and was keeping Robertson at bay throughout the first two sessions. The Australian then came back to lead at 13-12, before Selby really showed his steel to take 4 in a row and move to within one frame of victory. Robertson had time for his 103rd century of the season (will that ever be bettered?) before Selby closed out the match 17-15. The commentators described it as one of the best matches in the tournament’s history. It probably was, but they say that far too often for it to have any impact anymore.
O’Sullivan was of course the odds-on favourite for the final, but everyone knows that an in-form Selby is very difficult to beat, and after his previous finals against Hawkins and Carter, it looked like it could be the first time in a while that the Rocket had faced some serious competition. However at 10-5 down, and Ronnie being such a good front-runner, things were looking bleak for the Jester. Grabbing those last two frames of the second session to reduce the deficit to three proved crucial, as he proceeded to take the first four on Monday afternoon for an 11-10 lead at the mid-session interval. Ronnie took a scrappy next before a very long, even scrappier frame with a multitude of missed chances finished with the nadir of them all, a simple pink in the middle that O’Sullivan inexplicably overhit to give Selby a slender advantage going into the evening session. I thought John Virgo might just shoot himself in the face, such was his disbelieving reaction. It was Ronnie’s worst session at the Crucible since he went from 8-8 to 8-16 against Graeme Dott in the 2006 semi-final.
All the rage on Twitter were phrases like “Selby is killing snooker”, “The snooker equivalent of parking the bus”, and “Boring boring Selby”, but these people were demonstrating a complete ignorance of the actual events. Selby was actually playing fairly aggressively, but he was struggling with his cue-ball control, and was getting lucky when he missed a pot. So the frames were certainly going scrappy, but not because of Selby’s tactics. He was definitely not being boring on purpose, as seemed to be the social media consensus. Even some of those defending Selby’s supposed tactics, saying he was right to play defensively against Ronnie, were missing the point – he clearly wasn’t playing defensively! He was just attacking badly, and getting away with it! Why won’t these people listen?! I was getting quite angry, I can tell you.
The final session began with some creepy commentary from Willie Thorne, asking two female sportspeople in the audience (full grown women who he referred to as “girls”) to “smile for Uncle Willie”. Eeuww. #unclewillie was trending shortly afterwards – you can’t get away with that crap nowadays, Thorne! Meanwhile, it was more of the same, with Selby responding to an O’Sullivan century by opening up a 15-13 lead before a sensational yellow down the side cushion got the Rocket back within one. Many thought that this would be Ronnie’s cue (oh dear) to push on and take the initiative, but it actually seemed to inspire Selby, who managed to just get himself totally focused at exactly the right time. He knocked in a long red and made his first century of the final, a magnificent 127 that left Ronnie needing 4 of the last 5 frames. There was no looking back from that point for Selby, with a run of 87 taking him to within one frame, and then a nerveless clearance including a green slammed in along the top cushion to get up towards baulk for the brown, which gave him a memorable 18-14 victory. Hats-off to O’Sullivan for being magnanimous in defeat and praising Selby as he deserved, having won 13 of the last 17 frames. People were making Dott/Ebdon comparisons, but Selby is a more complete player than either of those former champions, and has the temperament and ability to end his career as a multiple world-title winner.
So while the king was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown. That doesn’t quite work, but since I thought of it, I haven’t been able to stop myself putting it in as a closer. So get over it. I’ve even made it the title of this blog, just to annoy you.
Chris Duerden