The Crucible theatre. The eighth wonder of the modern world. The Pantheon for quiet men in Clarks loafers who spend their lives sipping bottled water in dark rooms. As spring rolls in and the nights draw out, a quiet cavalry of television cameras descends upon Sheffield.
The 78th World Snooker Championship starts this weekend. Legions of viewers will spend the next two weeks becoming intimately acquainted with the curvature of our settees, nodding along in terse agreement with the analysis of Steve “Nugget” Davis and marvelling at the incredible non-receding hairline of John Parrott.
For the uninitiated, televised snooker moves at glacial pace and, as a result, it is unequivocally joyous. It is the antithesis of the frenzied graphics that have turned Sky Sports into a Minority Report-style digital battleground. Instead, this is a sport where guys who had Mega Drive games named after them are still in the qualifying rounds. Where nicknames such as “the Rolls-Royce of Cue Action” are dished out without a trace of irony.
The World Snooker Championship rewards those who get involved from the off, so here is what you should look out for to make the most of the coverage.
The wildcard
Sure, we can all appreciate Ronnie O’Sullivan thrashing someone while playing left-handed for a laugh, but when you dive into round one you’ve got to pick an underdog. Each year, a procession of bright young things stir a collective sigh of relief amongst the veterans. “The future of snooker is in safe hands,” they’ll say, as a procession of parakeet-haired upstarts blast their way round the baize. Reanne Evans marginally missed out on making history after being beaten by Ken Doherty in the qualifiers, but this year, twentysomethings Jamie Jones and Anthony McGill hope to replicate Judd Trump as snooker’s latest poster boy.
The nicknames
It seems that in some point in about 2010, a mandate was passed requiring even the most obscure players to assume a nickname. In the past we had “Hurricane Higgins” and “Rocket Ronnie”, but now there is “the Baby-faced Assassin”, AKA Fergal O’Brien, and “the Jester from Leicester”, AKA last year’s winner and world No 1 Mark Selby. For added Phoenix Nights charm, the names are hollered at full volume in boxing compere style before each game.
The commentary cliches
“Where’s the cue ball going?” John Virgo rises from his seat, his voice growing tense. “Where’s the cue ball going?” Anxiety grows exponentially as the white drifts into the top corner, before plopping neatly into the pocket. “Well,” he will say, heartbeat returning to resting pace, “you make your own luck in this game.” And so it continues, now and forever. Snooker commentary has a small, revolving cast of figures who are like your dad on Christmas Day telling the only five stories he has ever told in his life. A personal favourite is that the Crucible’s audience are a “a very knowledgable crowd”, a phrase always accompanied by a slow pan across the theatre, where you can guarantee at least two people will be asleep.
The vaguely cinematic filler material
There is a lot of dead time when nothing is really happening during the world championship. Either it is a mid-session interval or the game hasn’t started yet or one of the players hasn’t finished playing Fifa. Either way, the BBC has tons of pre-recorded guff that is guaranteed to raise a smile. It usually features a sepia-tinged Dennis Taylor strolling through the Winter Garden at a canted angle, coming all over all Simon Armitage and speaking in rhyming couplets about “the Steel City” and “John Higgins sitting pretty”.
The pundits
Davis, Parrott and Doherty are like a triptych of antique sculptures, carefully packaged up and trundled between locations to be put on show before a quiet crowd of people who gather on tiptoes to catch a glimpse of them. Along with Hazel Irvine, they reject adverbs (“He’s got to hit it quick”) and while away the hours discussing who exactly is the best “single-ball potter” emerging through the ranks today. It all adds up to a global sporting event that has more in common with a family gathering than a spectacle watched by millions. For that reason, it is unmissable.
