Those of us who remember Question Of Sport back in the David Coleman days will recall the viewers , "answers on a postcard please", Mystery Guest competition.These were basically a series of sports stars with their faces hidden doing ordinary everyday tasks & you had to guess who they were.These clips were always accompanied by an old Johnny Nash song that included the lyrics "There are more question than answers & the more I find out the less I know". As I started trying to write this preview piece & the more I drilled down into the likely contenders, the more this song started to play around in my head.
The obvious favourite on from this season is Neil Robertson, but you just can't ignore his record here since his victory in 2010. I can think of at least five championships since then where he has looked the likely winner in week one, only to bow out when things start to heat up. When thinking of Neil , I often think of the great horse Desert Orchid. In his day "Dessie" as he was affectionately known by the racing public, was an equine superstar who transcended to sport.Grey horses always look more spectacular anyway, but he had the brilliance to go with it. The only problem was he also had a tendency to jump slightly right at his fences, so on a left handed track, this cost him ground every time. Now for non racing people The Cheltenham festival is "The Crucible" of horse racing, but unfortunately for Dessie it was also a left handed track. Every year he would win multiple races, arrive at Cheltenham as a favourite & and on all but one glorious occasion leave empty handed.It could just be the case that Neil is not suited by the venue and is destined to always come up short.
While on the "horses for courses" theme, there is noone who seems more suited to the Crucible marathon than the defending champion Mark Selby. Last year he looked the winner from a long way out & just seemed to be have that ability to control his matches.. This year however has been a very difficult year for him. After defeat at The Masters, he revealed he has been battling with his mental health. After that he tried his best to plough on, but still struggling on the table, he withdrew from a couple of events to focus on his recovery. The fact is we just don't know what Mark Selby is going to show up on Saturday morning. All we can hope is that he is now in a good place mentally & that he gives his usual top notch performance.
If you had only seen two snooker matches this season & they were the Champion of Champions & Turkish Masters final, you would be going in strong on Judd Trump here ,but the fact is, those performances aside, he has looked a shadow of the player who has hoovered up titles the last few seasons. He talked after his defeat in the recent Tour Championship about been fed up with the game,so its hard to see how he can turn it around here
The old "Class of '92" have continued to defy father time & have all got titles to their name this season. In that Tour Championship Ronnie looked totally up for it, becoming the only player to record 5 centuries in back to back matches ,before being pipped by Robertson in the match of the year. He looks good,but as ever with him here, the question is how he handles the bad sessions.. Higgins went on to reach that final ,his 6th final of the season, but as was the case earlier in the year, he got within one of the title only to falter..This was the most gut wrenching of them all as he lost 10-9 from leading 9-4.Even for all the mental fortitude he has displayed in the past, its hard to see how he can recover from that to challenge for a 5th world title here. The other member of the trio Mark Williams continues to do it his way & you just never know what he could do ,but he'll have to be on it like he was in '18.
Elsewhere on peoples shortlist will be UK champion Zhao Xintong, who showed how good he is in York last December & then demolished Yan Bingtao in the German Masters final. The main question mark over him is lack of experience over the longer matches.This was evident in his loss to Higgins in the Tour Championship, but such is the rate of knots that he is learning at, you couldn't rule him out.Likewise his fellow countryman Yan Bingtao is maybe lacking in the experience over the longer matches, but seems to have the style of game that might just be suited by it.
Bearing in mind all of the above there are others to consider, but they will need a strong tail wind to be holding the trophy come May 2nd & like those named previously, they all have their own issues to overcome, Kyren Wilson has had a mediocre season really, but has shown a liking for the the venue previously,.Barry Hawkins, has had some superb performances here in the past ,but can he really be considered a contender now? Shaun Murphy got within three frames of the title last year ,but has been dogged by injury this season & Mark Allen has been a bit hit & miss since he won the Northern Ireland Open.
So there you go.As I said at the outset, there are so many question marks coming in here & at time of writing we don't even know the survivors from the qualifiers yet.I mean the one world final that Ding reached was after coming through the qualifiers. If her were to do it again could you really rule him out??
However though if I was to stick my neck out , I just have a feeling that we might have a record equalling 7th world title for Ronnie , but don't hold me to that!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment