Cricket World Cups; From maroon caps to green hair

Domestic competition and bilateral series are all very well, but everyone loves a World Cup, don’t they? In the past six years I’ve become rather attached to the alternative Champions Trophy, if only because the use of Cardiff as a venue has enabled me to tag along several times in person. However, with only the top eight  ranked nations eligible to participate,  it lacks the cache of a genuine World Cup. 

The growth of Twenty 20 has inevitably led to the format’s own global tournament every two years. To be honest, I have little interest in it. Probably the only action I can recall watching live was the astonishing last-over climax at Kolkata in 2016 when Ben Stokes served up four identical deliveries for Carlos Brathwaite to club for six and hand the West Indies an unlikely victory.

For me, the only cricket World Cup that matters is the one based on official one-day international rules. That now involves fifty overs a side but when the Prudential Cup launched in 1975 the poor things had to play sixty. Too long for twenty-first century viewers but great value for teenage fans like me.

The ODI as a concept was very much in its infancy; prior to this tournament the total number contested by the six Test-playing nations was fewer than twenty. With a straightforward format comprising two groups of four, semis and final, the World Cup was easily condensed into a fortnight in June. All the more reason to relish all fifteen matches. Given that all twelve group fixtures took place on just three days, the simultaneous scheduling and only two available BBC TV channels meant that few were televised live.

To be honest I have no recollection of watching England sail through Group A against India, East Africa and New Zealand. The other quartet was far more interesting and it was Pakistan who fell victim to the Group of Death, their fate determined by a thrilling finish at Edgbaston. Despite the efforts of Majid Khan, Sarfraz Nawaz et al, the West Indies scraped home by one wicket with just two balls to spare.

Infuriatingly, both semis were contested midweek, so pesky school commitments precluded a full day’s feast of TV cricket. I expected to get home to watch the England-Australia finale so was staggered to find it had already been wrapped up. Instead of Lillee and Thomson, it was the little-known left-arm swing bowler Gary Gilmour who dominated, taking a stunning 6-14.

And so it came to pass that the inaugural final involved the Aussies and Windies who were becoming bitter rivals. It turned out to be one of the most memorable matches I’ve ever watched. Annoyingly, we missed the middle section – including Clive Lloyd’s magnificent century – because Dad’s school fete took priority. However, from Roy Fredericks treading on his stumps in executing a hooked six off Lillee to some fabulous run-outs by Viv Richards and premature pitch invasions near the end, all the game lacked was a nail-biting last-ball climax. Just writing this 44 years later sets my skin all a-tingle.

The next two World Cups were also hosted by England who still couldn’t quite make home advantage count. In 1979, I glowed with pride and wonder as my idol Viv Richards flayed England’s finest to all corners of Lord’s. That audacious match-winning flicked six off Mike Hendrick will never leave me an image of an alien beamed down from a planet where cricket was played on an altogether higher plane.

Four years on and Viv was at it again, part of a Windies side that was if anything even firmer favourites. They cruised to the final where the fantasy fast bowling quartet of Roberts, Marshall, Garner and Holding dismissed India for under 200. And yet this time the script was ripped up. Once Kapil Dev had pulled off a terrific backpedalling over-the-shoulder catch to end Richards’ menacing innings, Amarnath and Madan Lal completed the job and we had new world champions.

England’s monopoly on hosting duty was over, and the Asian subcontinent assumed the role in the autumn of ’87 followed by Australia/New Zealand in ’92. The time difference and for us, out-of-season scheduling, meant I didn’t watch much of either tournament. The sport was becoming more open, with the Aussies and Pakistan respectively, holding the cup aloft. Imran Khan’s moment appeared destined, achieved at the age of 39 in his very last ODI. The crumbling of cricket’s barriers was further illustrated in 1996 when little Sri Lanka shocked the world by beating Australia with an innovative brand of limited-overs strategy, and the skill of Aravinda da Silva.

In the summer of ’99, cricket ‘came home’, sort of. In fact, England shared fixtures with Scotland, Wales and the Netherlands but at least the premier tournament was held in our summer and our time zone. That said, I don’t recall watching much of it on the box. One exception was the India v Sri Lanka group stage game at Taunton. I was working in London at the time but our office featured a little TV set high on the wall. Someone – not me - had the foresight to switch it on just as Sourav Ganguly and, more surprisingly, Rahul Dravid, piled on a terrific triple-century partnership. I doubt much work was done that afternoon. South Africa were looking likely winners only to lose their heads in a climactic frantic semi-final scramble against eventual champs Australia. Thus the competition introduced not only the Super Six and the white ‘Duke’ ball but also the unwanted ‘chokers’ label around the Proteas’ necks. Twenty years later, rightly or wrongly, it’s still there.

Things took a political turn in 2003 and the combination of eye-catching results (e.g against Sri Lanka) and fortuitous boycotts in Africa propelled lowly Kenya and Bangladesh into the semi-final stratosphere. For all the giant-killings, Australia were unbeatable and duly thumped India in the final by 125 runs. I caught a few late-evening highlights on BBC2 of the 2007 event, which featured an early exit for India (which prompted a change of format to prevent any repeat of such a financially damaging scandal), Ireland’s defeat of Pakistan, the latter’s coach Bob Woolmer suffering a fatal heart attack and a farcical final completed in near-darkness.

By Spring 2011, I was seeing Angie, who had Sky Sports at home, so in between her precious football, I sneaked a few glimpses of cricket at weekends. England’s embarrassment at the hands of the green-haired Irish was joyous to behold but it was also a pleasure to witness the concluding hour or so of the final in Mumbai. The decision to stage the World Cup across the entire Asian subcontinent, with Dhaka hosting the opener, proved a resounding success. For all the caring and sharing, it has to be said that from Sehwag’s brilliant 175 in Match 1 to MS Dhoni’s characteristically piece of perfect pacing six weeks later, the trophy had India’s name on it throughout.

The most recent edition saw another Aussie triumph although co-hosts New Zealand pushed them hard with their aggressive play. Ireland won more games than England, whose chances of progression were ended by Bangladesh, but I was disappointed that for 2019 the ICC decided to raise the drawbridge to stop the Associate nations getting ideas above their station.

On the plus side, the forthcoming tournament is now returning to these shores. Consequently, subject to politics, personal health and that perennial enemy of cricket, inclement weather, this summer will allow me to watch my first ever World Cup matches live in Cardiff. This time, top-ranked England will start hot favourites but above all I look forward to enjoying the multinational atmosphere and exciting performances. It may not match up to the nostalgic aura of 1975 – Viv, Clive, Lillee and all that – but here’s hoping for a summer to remember.

Golf: Seaside Putting and Links Legends

Golf and I enjoy a somewhat ambivalent relationship. The traditional misogynistic  Pringle sweater/nineteenth hole snifters/middle-class businessman image rests uneasily with me. However, place me within walking distance of a putting green or mini-golf course and even now I revert to being an eight year-old pestering Dad for a game.

From the day I was given a plastic set of two clubs and ball, I was smitten. No family holiday in England was complete without an eighteen-hole workout. They were competitive, too. Scorecards were meticulously and accurately maintained, and usually retained as souvenirs of the fortnight as lovingly as any postcard or shells collected from the beach.

There were favourites. In 1970 Newquay boasted two excellent adjacent mini-golf courses and I still recall the thrill of a hole-in-one at Minehead. A nine-hole pitch’n’putt greensward atop the Cornish cliffs at Porth showed I could wield a seven-iron without embarrassment but I never forgave the owners of a chalk-grass putting links on the Isle of Wight where one hole was as lethal as anything prepared at Augusta! Miss the cup on the up-slope and the ball would inevitably roll back to your feet. We stopped counting strokes at ten…

Some venues drew me back many a-time. When visiting Nanna and Grandad at Clacton, Dad and I, often with Catherine and others in tow, would enthusiastically walk to the nearby ‘Rec’ for a round before the man in the hut could close for the day. We were also fortunate to live near a park featuring a nine-hole pitch ‘n’ putt which offered enough variety, vegetation and even genuine sand-filled bunkers to challenge anyone. Dad and I enjoyed many tight contests there on a summer afternoon, and later there were some keen competitions involving Billericay Rotaract members. Such courses were great levellers. Friends who could swing an iron like a pro were often disadvantaged by their tendency to over-hit. With luck I could ‘top’ a ball to the green and still record a three.

Hacking around Lake Meadows is all very well but it’s not proper golf. I often wondered what it would be like to play on a full-size course, somewhere to encourage me away from my natural conservatism and have the confidence to give the ball a good whack with a driver of long iron. I’m still waiting! The closest I have come to the clubhouse experience is an overnight stay at the prestigious Chepstow St Pierre hotel and post-funeral wake at the palatial Buckinghamshire club amidst the primped parklands of Denham.

For all the close encounters with the genuine golfing set and serried ranks of electric buggies, full ascent into the rarified atmosphere has passed me by. Instead I have focussed on watching the world’s best plying their trade on the telly, admiring their ability to power the little ball three hundred yards with fade from the tee, place an approach shot with back-spin inches from the flag or judge a forty-foot putt’s route across a minefield of undulations and gradients to perfection.

The earliest memory I have of a golf professional actually owes less to television and more to school. At the age of five I was in the same primary class as Bobby Platts, the son of the local Thorndon Park professional Lionel, who that same year led the Open after the 1^st round and played in the 1965 Ryder Cup. I don’t know whether Bobby followed his dad into the sport but he did follow him up to Yorkshire where Lionel became the pro at Pannal. For years I would comb the results pages of the Daily Express for a mention of L. Platts (Pannal), especially in the Open qualifying competition or the tournament proper.

Like Wimbledon and Test cricket, the four days of The Open in July formed part of the British summer’s holy trinity of sporting events. Interest in the US Masters and Ryder Cup would come later but, with a passing nod to the usually rain-sodden Wentworth Matchplay in autumn, my interest in golf was largely concentrated onto the historic annual festival of links golf. I would also often watch the BBC’s Pro-Celebrity hit-and-giggle Friday night programmes, in which Tarby, Brucie, ‘Enry and Wogan-y would swap putts and laughs with Tony Jacklin and Lee Trevino, but that doesn’t really count.

As for The Open, I would watch it live when I got home from school on the Thursday and Friday, with little homework to distract me given the impending summer break, but the highlight was the final round on the Saturday, later Sunday afternoon. The leader’s procession to the eighteenth green is still one of TV’s great moments of theatre: the adulation, exuberant crowds sprinting to the stewards’ rope for best view of the concluding putts, the competitors’ understated waves and humble smiles, gestures which communicated their thoughts: mustn’t get too excited, I could yet blow it with a three-putt! I always found this an emotional moment, whoever was playing.

In the early Seventies, Brits such as Brian Huggett, Neil Coles, Brian Barnes, Christy o’Connor (Junior and Senior) and even Peter Alliss, before he focussed on being the much-loved purring voice of golf, would always be in the mix. However, the big names tended to be Americans such as Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Billy Casper, supplemented by other exotic foreigners like Peter Thomson or Gary Player. I vaguely recall our own Tony Jacklin triumphant in 1969 but he wasn’t exactly a charismatic sporting icon to an eight year-old boy.

Super-Mex’ Lee Trevino, on the other hand was an entertainer on and off the course. His was a wise-cracking personality, heart worn precariously on his sleeve, but he was also a cracking player on the global circuit, winning the Open in ‘71 and ‘72. A year later I was smitten by the railway-fringed fairways of Troon (won by Tom Weiskopf) then in ’75 the admirably cool-headed Tom Watson first held the claret jug. Annoyingly, he did so only after an 18-hole play-off against Jack Newton on the Monday afternoon, thus depriving me of a chance to see the action as it happened.

The Yanks continued to hold sway for the next few years but I was enthralled by the brutal but brilliant two-man show in 1977 when Watson and Nicklaus went head to head on a rare sunny Sunday afternoon at Turnberry. The ‘Golden Bear’ shot a bogey-free 66, finished ten ahead of third-placed Hubert Green and still lost by a stroke! The following summer, a repeat looked on the cards after 54 holes but this time Watson faded and the perennial challenger Jack edged a handful of other Americans to win his fifteenth ’major’. The leaderboard also featured a couple of Brits: our then number one Peter Oosterhuis and a twenty year-old Nick Faldo.

But the tide it was a-changing. When an unknown nineteen year-old finished second behind Johnny Miller in ’76, I duly took note. However, what do Spaniards know about golf? By the time we reached 1979, the old monopoly of the Yanks, throwing a few crumbs the way of Britain and the Commonwealth, was starting to creak. In 1979, the cracks were ripped apart. The sport hailed a new star and the golfing world expanded its borders to include continental Europe for the first time.  

Voices of Cricket - From Benaud to Bumble

Personal memories of all sports are inextricably linked to the faces and voices of broadcasters, and cricket is no exception. It’s quite possible that the first cricket commentators ever heard were on radio not television. As Dad would have merrily recalled, the BBC’s great institution Test Match Special has offered ball-by-ball information and companionship to cricket fans for the best part of a century. Whether the action was in Madras, Melbourne or Manchester, at 3pm or 3am, January or July, there would be boys of all ages glued to the wireless for news of England’s progress.

It seems such an antiquated notion the twenty-first-century cricket fan, used to Sky’s satellite coverage and battery of cameras and techie gizmos, but I absolutely understand why so many man of previous generations would consume their cricket via TV pictures and simultaneous radio commentary. That says so much for the skills of those men with the microphones under the tutelage of evergreen producer Peter Baxter.

Dad would rave about the leisurely Hampshire burr of John Arlott. However, my only lasting recollection of Arlott was the news of his final, unfussy TMS sign-off in 1980. I was definitely watching on TV when the crowd were informed of his farewell utterances. Arlott excepted, I tend to associate TMS with plummy private school accents, which is only partly fair. The image is probably given credence by the major contributions over many years from Brian Johnston, Christopher Martin-Jenkins and Henry Blofeld, although the former players accompanying those posh boys provided much-needed variation, notably from those legends of the White Rose, Fred Trueman and Geoffrey Boycott. Be it on TV or radio, Boycs has been a Marmite character but his devil-may-care plain speaking gets my vote every time.

It’s many years since I tuned in voluntarily rather than out of duty (I was writing a BBC Listening Panel questionnaire and producer Peter Baxter showed no interest in co-operating!) so I cannot offer an opinion of the merits of Phil Tufnell, Vic Marks, Michael Vaughan (presumably in the opinionated Trueman role) or the long-overdue female arrivals, Isa Guha and Ebony Rainford-Brent. I know them from their TV work, of course, and the latter pair are anything but ‘token women’. Three decades have passed since Dad and I were captive audiences driving all the way to Dorset in the Vauxhall Astra (our first car with a radio!). Poor Mum must have hated it. As I recall, not a single Aussie wicket fell all day but it did give me the chance to appreciate the talents of the TMS team of 1989 in full flow.

I find it incredible that only a few years later Jonathan Agnew made his national broadcasting debut, and ‘Aggers’ is still going strong. He is also the only commentator I ever met. I say ‘met’ but in reality I just asked him prior to a post-work event if I could take a seat and he responded a touch curtly that it was reserved. Er, OK. Never mind. Despite his private education background, I find him the perfect radio commentator. Articulate and affable, he slotted into the team seamlessly and from what snippets I have heard manages to remain fresh.  

But it was the Beeb’s television output which substantially shaped my love of cricket. In the Seventies and Eighties, it was often the versatile Peter West who was the face of cricket, topping and tailing the programmes and doing the lunchtime interviews; that is, when there was no horse racing or tennis to intervene. He was succeeded by ex-Glamorgan and England skipper Tony Lewis, who added a pleasing Welsh lilt to proceedings. From that era I also enjoyed the warm commentaries of Jim Laker, Tom Graveney and Jack Bannister, complemented when the Windies came to town by the great Tony Cozier. Michael Holding and Ian Bishop have kept the Caribbean accents to the fore, armed with tales of their fast bowling exploits told with a dry impudence.

I’m not sure David Gower and Ian Botham were bosom buddies in their England heyday but on Sky Sports they display an easy-going bonhomie. From what I have seen and heard, Gower is at least the equal if not superior to any of the old BBC brigade. I was never a fan of the shouty style of Tony Greig or Dermot Reeve and, while David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd is undoubtedly at times amusing, his comedy turn during T20 matches becomes rather tiresome, to the point of forcing me to switch off or press the ‘Mute’ button. Michael Slater pushed my patience to its limits while the OTT Danny Morrison epitomises why I lost my rag with the insufferable IPL.

Of course, the T20 circus is geared towards a younger, more energetic audience, and so the commentary teams need to reflect it. However there has been one shining example of how to sound modern, relevant, erudite, witty and entertainingly engaging, even into his eighties: Richie Benaud. Whether introducing the BBC’s highlights programmes (‘G’d Evenin’, everyone…”) adopting that slightly sideways stance, right eyelid drooping quizzically, or describing live action with consummate skill, laconic phraseology and impeccable neutrality, the former Australian leg-spin bowler and captain was surely the greatest of them all. I knew the game was up for the Beeb when Richie jumped ship in 1999. As influential journalist and commentator in its widest sense, nobody comes close.

Cricket: Unsung heroes

Whilst the stars make the headlines and common topics of conversation, it’s often the lesser-known names who flesh out our relationships with the entertainment media which matter to us. It could be the TV soap character who sits in the pub uttering just a line at Christmas or the plucky Brit tennis hopeful you only catch on the first day’s Wimbledon highlights.  With cricket, too, the seasoned county pro is just as much a factor in my loyalty to the sport.

It’s not just about the T20 rent-a-slogger or 100-cap fast bowler; I’m talking about the type of player who gives his all to one club, or maybe several, without quite hitting the international heights. They’re the ones who, in Fantasy Cricket terms, may be mid-price but invariably offer unbeatable value ahead of the top-priced England batsmen who are almost invisible on the domestic circuit.

Such people are often disparaged as mere ‘journeymen’ or ‘bed-blockers’ denying starlets the chance of progression. It’s nonsense. Not everyone can be a future, present or past international, and it’s often the experienced stalwarts who do more for the game and its role in schools and clubs than a whole gaggle of ECB fusspots. The only problem with the supporting cast members is that their profiles are so low   that finding references on YouTube is nigh on impossible!

Sometimes, the cricketers who build a fervent following amongst the handful of county followers eventually earn grudging recognition by the blinkered selectors, albeit maybe only for a few matches or as drinks carriers in, say, New Zealand. Sheer volume of runs or wickets, or a well-timed century against the touring side, can propel such icons into the media spotlight for a few glorious weeks or months before being discarded in favour of the next lad from the Surrey nets or a 35 year-old veteran recalled for one final hurrah.

I remember batsmen such as Derbyshire legend Kim Barnett shuffling across the crease wearing the England badge, various Glamorgan favourites like Matthew Maynard, Hugh Morris and Steve James granted fleeting opportunities and bowlers including Phil Newport, Jonathan Agnew, Mark Ilott, Martin Bicknell and Steve Watkin trying their luck against an unforgiving Aussie or Windies line-up. Even left-arm spinner John Childs bowled so well for Essex in 1988 that he made his debut in his late thirties, albeit for only two appearances against Richards, Haynes and co. I also felt sorry for Essex wicketkeeper James Foster whose brilliance was eclipsed by the claims of Matt Prior and the succeeding series of sloggers.

Some, like Simon Kerrigan and Haseeb Hameed, have never recovered from the experience although, at just 22, the latter may yet get another chance. Others, like Adam Lyth and Mal Loye, just dusted themselves off and returned to their counties with renewed vigour.

Many never quite secured a single senior outing for their country. I’ve mentioned Somerset’s James Hildreth but what about the men whose efforts for the county in the Botham-Viv-Garner era have been forgotten by all bar the Taunton faithful. The terrific trio could not have brought success without a supporting cast including Slocombe, Breakwell, Taylor, Denning, Rose and Roebuck.

Similarly, Essex’s sparkling seasons in the late Seventies and Eighties owed much to their entertaining spinner Ray East – always with a smile on his face – Brian Hardie and Paul Prichard. In the Seventies, Scotland-born Hardie was a notoriously slow scorer yet by 1985 out-performed Graham Gooch to hit a match-winning 110 in the 1985 Nat West Trophy final. Billericay-born Prichard didn’t bat that day but I saw him several times in the Nineties as post-Gooch captain and ever-reliable batsman. As an aside, many years later a conversation across desks with an office colleague revealed she had been the Essex man’s girlfriend. Yes, a genuine if unlikely WAG!

Other favourites of mine, for no obvious reasons, included Gloucestershire ‘keeper-batsman Andy Stovold, the anagrammatically perfect Gloucester/Worcester seamer Brian Brain, Derbyshire’s balding medium-pacer Fred Swarbrook, Glamorgan’s Rodney Ontong and Nottinghamshire’s Basharat Hassan (more for their assonance-heavy names than anything) and the Warwickshire batsman and fab fielder Trevor Penney.

In more recent times, I can’t help but admire long-servers such as Worcestershire’s Daryl Mitchell (for whose career-best 298 I was present at Taunton), evergreen seamer David Masters, faithful Glamorgan gloveman Mark Wallace and the gritty Notts all-rounder Steven Mullaney. I had to check Mullaney’s English credentials as I thought his absence from senior recognition must be explained by a South African or Australian nationality. No, he’s a Cheshire lad and only this winter was selected to lead the England Lions in India. 

Before I end this chapter, I should mention Wes Durston. Despite being only a bit-part player, he was much loved in Somerset where he skipped between roles at Glastonbury CC and the county. Finding himself out of contract in 2009, he was picked alongside others in a similar position to represent the Unicorns in the CB40 competition. Brilliant performances attracted Derbyshire’s attention and for a few summers he was one of their brightest all-round stars. Even Somerset fans cheered the late-career success of this archetypal unsung hero.

Snooker: Whirlwind to Rocket

By the mid-Eighties, snooker was for me no longer just a refuge of last resort, to watch only when there was nothing else on any of the alternative three (yes, only three) TV channels. It wasn’t just the Crucible headliner; Dad and I would set Mum’s eyes rolling by watching hours of live coverage of any tournament going, be it prime-time or late evening post-Newsnight. From the Masters to the UK and Scottish Open, snooker was essential viewing, and not only in our household. Working with TV audience figures, I was acutely aware of BBC2’s dependence on the sport which kept on giving. Chas & Dave even took ‘Snooker Loopy’ to number six in the charts.

The atmosphere was irresistible: the mesmeric effect of gaudy coloured balls being manipulated across the green baize, the gentle tap of cue on ball, the exhilarating crack of a high-velocity pot, knowing applause after an immaculately executed safety shot or gasps as the black judders in the jaws, millimetres from perfection. I’d attempted to play pool and knew only too well how difficult it is to control a long tapered stick, to strike the white with just the right degree of power, in the designated square millimetre, all supported by an uncanny understanding of mechanics and angles. And these pros had to harness all of these elements under intense pressure.

Even the players famed for their speed around the table spent most of their matches deep in thought, inscrutable expressions concealing brains performing untold numbers of calculations, willing their arms and fingers to deliver what their minds had deemed necessary to win the frame. However, others were maintain the upper hand.

After Steve Davis in the Eighties, another pasty-faced automaton took control in the Nineties: Stephen Hendry. Like the red-headed Londoner, the shy Scot was hard to like but easy to admire. His popularity in m part of the country might have been wider had he not been responsible for single-handedly preventing a certain Jimmy White from winning a world title, not once but four times.

Like Alex Higgins in the Seventies, White made a deep impression on young men like me. He, too, possessed an exciting fluid style of attacking play and, with the epithet ‘Hurricane’ already adopted, he quickly became known as ‘the Whirlwind’. I once saw him standing alone on a platform at Liverpool Street station looking anything but: a whey-faced little-boy-lost clutching not a teddy bear but his cue box Was he waiting for his manager - or his mum? I didn’t stop to ask!

While Jimmy electrified audiences at tournaments for many years, he was unfortunate to reach his peak simultaneously with Hendry. Aged 21, he’d already given Davis a scare in the 1984 climax but in the Nineties, he reached five successive finals – and lost the whole bally lot. His 5-18 humiliation in 1993 was an excruciating watch but, if anything, the following year’s desperately close encounter was even harder to take.  White never made another Crucible final but he did hand Hendry a rare beating in ’98 before falling to a 22 year-old Ronnie O’Sullivan.

In the subsequent two decades snooker’s grip on the UK has loosened somewhat. My own relationship with the sport has come full circle, reverting to an occasional dip into the world championships once Angie has gone to bed. From Virgo to White, Parrott to Davis, the stars I grew up watching are more likely to be seen as engaging TV pundits or heard as commentators.

Some things don’t change. For all the growth around the world, including the lucrative Asian markets, the World title has remained in the hands of white men from the Commonwealth nations. Indeed, Neil Robertson is the only non-UK player to have won at the Crucible since Thorburn in 1980. Perhaps reassuringly, many of the big names I watched in the early Noughties are still on the scene, still competing for the major trophies. Snooker is a rare national sport where professionals continue to perform at the highest level for twenty or thirty years. Last year’s world champ Mark Williams and the man he beat, John Higgins, are both in their forties, as is the official number one, O’Sullivan.

But who of the current crop stand out for me? Well, as someone who watches live only rarely, I am in no position to assess relative qualities as cue-smiths. I can’t believe it’s a decade since Judd Trump burst onto the scene as a scruffy-haired Bristolian, threatening to take snooker by storm. As a West Country resident at the time, I did follow his progress for a while but admittedly even that interest has waned. Could 2019 be his year at the Crucible?

I know I ought to be a supporter of Ronnie. As a natural successor to Higgins and White, the natural showman and master break-builder has made himself one of the most recognisable and popular sports personalities in UK sport. And yet I can’t quite take him to my heart. Perhaps it’s my own ageing process but I lose respect for anyone who attempts to place himself above the sport itself. Of course he remains an incredible player. His astonishing first-round loss last week to an amateur, and the fact he hasn’t won the World crown since 2013, have not dented his reputation as the biggest draw in snooker. He still does things nobody else can. For example, I still marvel when he switches from right to left hand to pot a ball without any obvious loss of quality. And when coverage of his 1000^th century went viral last month, I had to smile at his cheeky grin and boyish celebrations around the table even as he continued his break. 

Snooker will survive without the Rocket, just as it did after the Hurricane and Whirlwind blew themselves out. It just needs another big personality to pull me back into the fold.