World Snooker Championship 2022 - Enjoy The Crucible while you still can as the world's best prepare for curtain-raiser
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Updated 11/04/2022 at 09:58 GMT
The World Snooker Championship has been hosted at The Crucible since 1977. However, with World Snooker Tour’s contract with the Sheffield venue running only until 2027, the worlds could, writes Dave Hendon, operate out of a new home in the coming years. Ahead of the 2022 event, he looks at the runners and riders ahead of the start of the event on April 16.
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Thank goodness Carole Watterson enjoyed going to the theatre. It was after a trip to Sheffield to see a play almost half a century ago that she told her husband, the promoter of the World Snooker Championship, that she may have found him a new venue.
Mike Watterson invented the professional circuit as we know it, understanding the needs of players, broadcasters and spectators in equal measure. In the 1970s, the World Championship had been played at a series of venues which were not fit for purpose. Rain even stopped play in Manchester in 1973 because of a hole in the roof.
So he drove to Sheffield to inspect the still relatively new theatre and found it to be just big enough to accommodate two tables, plus the TV production equipment. The year was 1977 and the Crucible era was born.
From very early on, it just worked. It was a warm, welcoming place with comfortable seats and good views of the tables wherever you were sat. The audience were very close to the players, heightening the pressure they were already feeling. It was an arena thick with smoke and tension. The cigarettes are long gone but the stressful atmosphere remains.
This is the room where it happens, where it has all happened – every moment of drama we can all think of in the last 45 years. The intimate surroundings have helped make the World Championship the special event it is and the continuity the venue provides means that each year the test for the players is the same.
Enjoy it while you can. Snooker’s future in Sheffield cannot be taken for granted. The Crucible is famously limited in terms of space and how best to maximise the championship’s commercial value is a long running point of discussion, more so now than ever after the stunning success of the Masters at London’s Alexandra Palace in January.
There, World Snooker Tour were able to sell high price hospitality packages for a specially erected lounge, but the Crucible does not have room for such extravagances. There has been chatter behind the scenes that additional revenue streams are not being utilised and the sport is therefore being left behind.
The contract with Sheffield is in place until 2027. Barry Hearn, who managed Steve Davis throughout his 1980s reign and retired as WST chairman last year (remaining as president), has stated publicly that he doesn’t want to be remembered as the man who took snooker away from the Crucible. But even Bazza can’t live forever. Those who follow will not necessarily look at things from such an emotional standpoint.
There are fair arguments for moving. Judd Trump has stated that snooker should be more ambitious and look to bigger, more vibrant venues. Others have suggested a World Championship should be taken around the world.
The arguments for staying are partly sentimental but not entirely. The Crucible in fact represents a very good commercial deal for snooker because of the support the event receives from Sheffield City Council. WST do not pay to hire the venue and so every ticket they sell is profit. Contrast this with a big arena in London where the upfront hire charge would be six figures before a ticket is sold.
A bigger venue means more potential ticket sales but bog standard first-round matches will not be a massive draw for punters. And do we really want five or six thousand fans at a snooker match? Pity the poor referee trying to keep order.
The desire to make more of the championship financially is understandable but most snooker fans don’t care about that. They care about what the Crucible means to them. Money can’t buy the memories burned into the DNA of the sport’s spectators over the decades and new fans travel from all over the world to make the annual pilgrimage to Sheffield.
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General view of the World Championship trophy during the World Snooker Championships at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, Englan
Image credit: Getty Images
For them, there is only one issue worth considering this week: who is going to win?
Neil Robertson has been the player of the season, winning four titles and playing to an exceptionally high standard. He has lost just eight matches from the 43 he has played during the current campaign.
But the Australian has developed Crucible demons since he won the title in 2010, complaining about the compact nature of the arena which inhibits his usual routine of walking into each shot. In recent years he has started brightly and then gone into his shell, overthinking things and struggling to stay positive. Can he steer clear of this mindset in 2022?
Form does not seem to matter at the World Championship, whose format is completely divorced from all other tournaments. It takes a special character to prevail in Sheffield, which is why the multiple champions are always a threat.
However, there are questions marks over them too. Mark Selby has won four of the last eight World Championships but has not played for two months as he seeks help for mental health issues. Could rustiness and a lack of focus on snooker count him out or will being fresher with a different take on the game make him more dangerous than ever?
John Higgins is a four-times champion and eight-times finalist but comes to Sheffield off the back of his painful defeat from 9-4 up to Robertson in the Tour Championship final. Has this dealt a fatal blow to one of the sport’s greatest ever pressure players?
Mark Williams has won three world titles and is still producing high quality snooker, but can he last the distance at the age of 47?
And what of Ronnie O’Sullivan? It feels like his destiny to at least equal Stephen Hendry’s modern day record of seven world titles, but aside from the World Grand Prix last December, O’Sullivan has been falling short – against Robertson in particular. Can he summon up his best game when it really matters? And will it be enough?
Trump spoke darkly of not even wanting to play at the World Championship following his Tour Championship exit, but possibly going there with lower expectations than in the last couple of years will be an advantage.
Consistency is key over the 17 days, so maybe reliable players like Kyren Wilson and Barry Hawkins – both previous finalists – can go deep again. Anthony McGill always seems to save his best snooker for the sport’s biggest event.
Stuart Bingham, the 2015 champion, was only denied another final appearance by a determined Selby in their semi-final last year while Shaun Murphy, quiet for most of the season, could find inspiration again in Sheffield, as he did 12 months ago when he finished runner-up.
The two young Chinese members of the top 16, Zhao Xintong and Yan Bingtao, approach the game in different ways. Will Zhao’s all-out attack see him cut a swathe through the field or does Yan’s capacity to slog it out make him more dangerous over the longer matches?
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There are top 16 players who have underperformed in Sheffield. Mark Allen has, remarkably, only appeared in one semi-final and that was back in 2009. Luca Brecel has lost all four matches he has played at the Crucible while Jack Lisowski has never been past the second round. Can any of these finally get on a run in the big one?
Questions, questions… The first-round draw this week will provide a glimpse at the possible answers. The top 16 are set to face a formidable group of qualifiers but some matches will be easier than others.
Selby, O’Sullivan and Zhao all start out on the opening day, mindful perhaps of a quote from Davis when he was at the top: “The first shock hasn’t happened yet and it could be you.”
This year, after a wildly unpredictable season, you can make a good case for – and against – pretty much anyone. We like to impose order on sport but so much of it is chaos and chance, just like life.
Imagine if Carole Watterson had never seen that play, or just forgotten to mention the theatre to Mike. Where would snooker have been without the Crucible?
But here we are once more on the best stage snooker has ever had. The room where it will happen again when the curtain comes up on Saturday.
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