Neal Foulds snooker column: The Eurosport and ITV pundit talks Judd Trump and the World Championship
READ: Richard Mann's World Championship outright preview
READ: Ronnie O'Sullivan interview as he demands protection from fans
READ: Part one of our Ronnie exclusive as he labels Mark Selby a 'bad loser'
READ: World Championship Pundits' predictions
It seems strange to think that it was only eight months ago that we were last in Sheffield for the World Championship, Ronnie O’Sullivan’s reign as champion set to be the shortest ever. Unless he wins again, of course, claiming what would be his seventh world title and in the process, drawing him level with the great Stephen Hendry.
Who truly knows what the next 17 days will bring – that’s the beauty of snooker – but it’s nice to have this wonderful tournament back in its spring slot and in Sheffield once again. There’s something about that, you know. It feels more normal, a real shoot of hope after a desperately tough year for everyone, and like it always does at the Crucible, expect the snooker to deliver something special.
The thing about the World Championship is that for all the hype surrounding the event, having the draw made so close to the start – Thursday morning this year – doesn’t actually give punters that much time to digest and dwell on it too much. Just a few days after the qualifiers finish and off we go again, the snooker taking centre stage. Just as it should.
Trump the man to beat but don't discount O'Sullivan
It has been Judd Trump taking centre stage for much of the last two seasons, and I’m tipping him to add to the maiden world title he claimed in brilliant fashion in 2019.
I’m hardly reinventing the wheel in siding with Trump but day in, day out, he’s proven himself to be the best player in the world having taken control of the snooker calendar in recent times. The number of wins he’s claimed in the last two seasons – six last term and five already this – tells you just how dominant he's been and I think there will be an extra motivating factor this month.
Ahead of the UK Championship Ding Junhui won in December 2019, Trump arrived at that event as strong favourite to hold all three Triple Crown titles at the same time having won the Masters and World Championship earlier that year. Now Trump arrives in Sheffield with none to his name and I’m sure he’ll be desperate to put that right and also ensure he becomes a multiple winner of this tournament, not just a one-time champion.
No disrespect to his opponents, but Trump will be pleased enough with a draw that pits him against Liam Highfield in round one before a potential clash with Yan Bingtao later down the line in the quarter-finals. These are tough matches, but it could have been a lot worse and I can’t see the world number one being phased in the slightest.
It will be the same for O’Sullivan who will surely fancy his chances of the reaching the quarter-finals at least, having drawn a Crucible debutant in Mark Joyce in the first round. He’ll still need to come out and perform, but he’s played a lot of good snooker this year – good enough to reach five finals – and will certainly take some stopping in the early rounds.
He’s on my shortlist, I can’t see how he wouldn’t be, but I’m not as big on him as I was last year. The thing with last year was that O’Sullivan came into the tournament on the back of a relatively quiet spell, and as I’ve said before, that can be an advantage when it comes to the World Championship.
O’Sullivan managed to peak for this event, grafting when he needed to and finding that touch of genius when Mark Williams, and more so Mark Selby, pushed him close. I just worry that he’s played a lot more snooker this time around, a lot more matches, and whether that might just catch him out at some stage. This is O’Sullivan we’re talking about, so anything is possible, but it is Trump who is very much the man to beat.
Class act Robertson needs to peak at right time
Another who has to be on the shortlist is Neil Robertson, such a terrific player and one who always seems to arrive in Sheffield in good form. The problem is, since winning the World Championship in 2010, he’s only made the last four once – back in 2014.
That is a remarkable statistic when you think about just how good Robertson has been in that time, and all the tournaments he has won, but for whatever reason, he hasn’t done it at the Crucible as often as we have expected. He lost to Robert Milkins on a couple of occasions – they were real coupon busters – and John Higgins did a number on him in the 2019 after Robertson had waltzed into the quarter-finals and looked unbeatable.
His dad has come over from Australia this year and I’m sure that will help him. He’s been practicing hard and will always be a danger, but he needs to find a way to work his way into the tournament and then to produce his best form when it really matters.
It’s much the same with Mark Allen, who might just go under the radar after a poor run of results and his draw which begins with a tough match against Lyu Haotian, before a meeting with the winner of another interesting tie between Mark Selby and Kurt Maflin.
That’s a particularly tough section of the draw, but it might just concentrate Allen’s mind a little and let’s not forget what a stellar field he beat when winning the Champions Of Champions not that long ago.
He’s tinkered with different cues since, which hasn’t helped in the short term, but these things have a habit of working themselves out eventually and it won’t be too long before he’s back competing for major titles.
If he can just find a way to work his way through the early rounds, he is such a devastating scorer that he could really cause some damage. He’s a fabulous player and would do well to take inspiration from what Stuart Bingham did when starting slowly and then producing his best snooker in the second week back in 2015, eventually lifting the trophy at the end of a dramatic tournament.
Allen entitled to his opinion
I can’t mention Allen without touching on his comments last week about Jimmy White being handed another invitational tour card from World Snooker. Allen is a very honest person who speaks his mind and he’s clearly against the decision. He’s not alone in that view, either.
It’s not a view I personally share, and World Snooker would be right to point out the commercial benefits of having people like White and Stephen Hendry on the tour. You only have to look at the interest their qualifier – between two wildcard players – generated to see the upside to the decision.
That said, Allen is very much entitled to his opinion and I know there won’t have been anything personal in what he said. Allen has always spoken from the heart and will stand up for what he believes in. There are too many people in life who just sit on the fence and he isn’t one of them. Fair play to him for that, for all we disagree on this particular point.
As for White, we’ve been friends for a long time and I can tell you that snooker is, and always has been, his life.
I retired when I was a 39-year-old because I knew it was time to do something else. I was never the player White was, anyway, but I think when he does eventually decide it’s time, he will view the game differently to how he views it now. That was certainly the case with me. I’d almost fallen out of love with snooker, but getting away from playing and exploring different things really rekindled my love affair with the game.
Whatever Jimmy decides to do going forward, he’ll always have my best wishes, but I’m not sure he’s reached that point just yet. Forget the Hendry match where both players struggled, but prior to that, White had started playing well again and enjoyed a good run at the Gibraltar Open when beating some fine players. There will always be great interest around him – he is one of the faces of our sport – and hopefully he can have a good season next year.
As I said earlier, Allen could face Selby in the second round, a man who has won three world titles already and might well have claimed a fourth but for O’Sullivan’s magic trick in last year’s epic semi-final between the pair. He would have still needed to beat Kyren Wilson in the final, but it’s a match he would have been favourite for and I think bookmakers and punters have kept that in mind this year.
He won two events before Christmas – beating O’Sullivan to retain the Scottish Open the obvious high – and while his more recent form is not so hot, historically he always comes good in Sheffield and is never an easy man to beat at the Crucible. He has to be respected, especially with the freshness angle potentially in his favour, but there is no doubt that he has been handed a nightmare draw.
Ding and Bingham clash one to savour
With my colours nailed firmly to the Trump mast for outright glory, I can’t finish before talking about the first round and one tie in particular.
Monday’s match between Ding and Bingham is fascinating for so many reasons, not least because coming into the last season’s World Championship, the former was the reigning UK champion and the latter Masters champion.
That’s how good these two are when at their best, and the interesting thing about them and those big tournament wins I’ve just mentioned is that both came out of nowhere, at a time when neither had been playing well and seemingly on the cusp of producing something special. But they did, and while this clash is nightmare for both, it has the potential to be a springboard for the winner to go on a big run.
As I’ve already alluded to, Bingham scraped through the first week before getting stronger and stronger as the event wore on in 2015, while Ding made the final the following year and has shown flashes of his best form in the last few months.
That has the potential to be a really good match, one to spark the tournament into life, while I want to wish the debutants well ahead of their first taste of the Crucible Theatre.
I feel very proud to have beaten Alex Higgins in my first match at the Crucible back in 1984 and for many reasons that win changed my life. I didn’t feel under any great pressure going into that match, and perhaps in that respect it is tougher for younger players nowadays, but I played well and picked up lots of exhibition work with Higgins on the back of it.
I think it helped that John Virgo and I used to play in the same snooker club in London and so, having gone down to Sheffield in 1979 to watch him play, I got my first taste of the Crucible ahead of going back there to play.
For someone like Sam Craigie, who takes on three-time world champion Mark Williams in the first round, this will be the ultimate test of his character. Craigie is a young player with lots of talent, but he won’t have experienced anything quite like the World Championship at the Crucible Theatre, which really is a test like no other: the ultimate test for a snooker player.
We’ll find out what the likes of him and Joyce are really made of next week, and I’m sure they can’t wait to show what they can do on the big stage. Good luck to them.
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