Saturday 9 July 2011

Snooker World Cup

Bangkok hosts the Snooker World Cup starting on Monday. It's the first running of the event since 1996 and features a far more global mix than before with 20 teams battling it out live on Eurosport.

You can read my preview for sportinglife.com by clicking here.

I'll post regular updates including betting tips throughout the tournament and it should be great fun to see some of the minnow nations such as Afghanistan and Poland under the cosh in the TV lights. We will see a few sitters missed.

But also see how it suits some pairings and not others. The alternate format of the singles play will mean some players struggle to find some rhythm so we will see the odd shock too - especially in the best of five frame round robin stage

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Why do you think it has come back to tv now? Is it the sheer number of participating countries?

snookereye said...

It's two words really. 'Barry' and 'Hearn'.

When it was last held in 1996 it was really a Home Nations tournament with odd other English speaking countries thrown in.

Hearn knows that to be truly global the game needs to further develop in newer territories.

Two years ago with Rodney Walker at the helm there were just six major tournaments and prize money was plummeting with a dearth of sponsors.

In Dec 2009 Hearn made himself available should the Chair become vacant and the players voted to kick Walker out (just...).

Now Hearn has a majority stake in the commercial rights of the game and this season there are 25 tournaments...

The players have never been so busy and the term snooker player is again a full-time and lucrative profession.