Neal Foulds talks Ronnie O'Sullivan, John Higgins and big pockets as the World Snooker Championship enters home straight

We’ve just passed the halfway stage of this year’s Cazoo World Snooker Championship and following a dramatic and quite remarkable first week, it’s all to play for as we approach the home straight.

It’s been a thoroughly enjoyable World Championship so far which has had a little bit of everything – from great snooker, big shocks, an apparent grudge match, a maximum break, and even a protester storming the Crucible and holding up play.

Four of the 16 seeded players were knocked out in round one, which is about par for the course, but we saw some seismic shocks in there. Ali Carter is usually a man to rely upon at the Crucible, but he was beaten by Jak Jones, while Si Jiahui once again lowered Shaun Murphy’s colours.

Debutants having a ball at the Crucible

With Jones already safely in the last eight, and Si 11-5 up on Robert Milkins at the time of the writing, we are likely to have two Crucible debutants in the quarter-finals for the first time since 1988. Way back then it was Steve James and Tony Drago, and there has certainly been no fluke in what Jones and Si have achieved so far this year.

On the face of it, Murphy getting turned over was hard to see coming, but the recent record of Tour Championship winners at the Crucible is relatively poor, and perhaps winning an event of that magnitude takes more out of these top players than many appreciate.

Si was a worthy winner in the end, for all Murphy staged a typically classy late rally, and Jones was the better player against both Carter and Neil Robertson. He did a real job on both and when the big moments came along, he took his chances and scored heavily.

I’ve watched of lot of the Welshman recently and for my money, he’s the most improved match-player on the tour, someone who has a game suited to the longer matches played at this tournament and one who has top 32 at least written all over him.

The other qualifier to have once again shone at the Crucible is Anthony McGill, but it has to be said that the 2020 semi-finalist is a top-16 player masquerading as a qualifier, and he was an awfully tough draw for Judd Trump, who I’m sure would have preferred to face just about any other qualifier in the hat.

O'Sullivan and Higgins looking good again

As for the other big guns, many of the headlines have unsurprisingly been made by Ronnie O’Sullivan, who looked a little off-colour in his win over Pang Junxu, before he really rose to the occasion when teaching Hossein Vafaei a lesson, in more ways than one.

That match had some added spice after Vafaei made some pretty remarkable comments about his opponent in the build-up, but if he were a racehorse I think you’d say he boiled over in the paddock, and he certainly didn’t give his running in the match itself.

I think O’Sullivan sensed weakness from Vafaei in the very early throws of that opening session and he ruthlessly went in for the kill, building up a big lead that he was never in danger of surrendering.

Eurosport commentator Dave Hendon called it perfectly when he concluded that Vafaei had talked the talk, but couldn’t walk the walk, and while we all know what a good player he is, it is to be hoped he learns from this whole episode.

As for O’Sullivan, he looks to be coming to the boil nicely, as does his old sparring partner, John Higgins, who played superbly to trounce Kyren Wilson 13-2 on Sunday.

Wilson has been playing the best snooker of his career in the last few weeks, making a wonderful 147 maximum break in the first round here, and nothing encapsulates the highs and lows of the Crucible more than the last few days he has endured. He was comprehensively outplayed by one of the great snooker players and his wait to become world champion goes on.

If Higgins can maintain that level of form, he could well be the man to beat. That said, many of the shock results I mentioned earlier in this piece have decimated the top half of the draw, while Higgins still appears likely to face Mark Selby in the last eight, and then possibly Mark Allen for a place in the final. It won’t be easy.

Protesters and pockets add to the drama

I can’t look back on the last week without mentioning the Stop The Oil protest that meant the first session of the match between Milkins and Joe Perry had to be postponed while the table was reclothed, but what a match it turned out to be with the former pulling off a memorable comeback.

If these last few years have taught us anything, it’s to expect the unexpected. So much in recent times – from politics, a global pandemic, and even a snooker World Championship being played in August – has been hard to believe.

Last Monday’s events were no different, and in the end it gave us a match to savour. Those fans who were able to make use of the bonus session offered by World Snooker were certainly treated to something very special.

Finally, I want to finish by expanding on a point I made while commentating for Eurosport on Sunday evening’s match between Higgins and Wilson, when I called out the generosity of the bottom corner pocket after an attempted pot along the rail from Higgins somehow dropped, despite the object ball making contact with the cushion a long way from the pocket.

I’ve never been one to pick on pocket sizes. I know it’s invariably a hot topic on social media, but I played in the 1980s and I can tell you now that we occasionally played on tables with big pockets. Not often, but it did happen, so this is not a case of me harping back to the good ol’ days.

But there’s no getting away from the fact that the table used for the bottom half of the draw has very generous pockets. The players are hardly ever missing along the bottom cushion and that pot I referenced from Higgins was a shot he would not have attempted without knowing just how generous the pocket was playing. He said as much on Eurosport after the match.

That pocket in particular is too big, and it’s not right. Yes, it’s the same for both players, but it changes the dynamic of the matches. The more attacking players are encouraged to take on pots they perhaps wouldn’t ordinarily dare, and the more accurate potters, or tactical players, just won’t benefit in the same way.

I suppose in golf you have wider fairways on some courses, and more narrow ones on others, asking different questions of players in different events. But snooker isn’t supposed to be like that – the conditions should be the same – and at the moment I don’t think the balance between encouraging good, attacking snooker and making the game a proper test is quite right.

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• History of 147 breaks
• Crucible memories: Ronnie's finest hour
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