Come To Milton Keynes: Snooker 2020-21

[David Agnew]

Barry Hearn is stepping down as head of World Snooker at the end of the season. The official World Snooker story on it is mainly an advert for Matchroom, You have to scroll down to the fourth paragraph for the first mention of snooker.

[longeared]

Other than "a Hearn underling", who's Steve Dawson?

[David Agnew]

That's as much as I know about him.

[longeared]

Ronnie's in a spot of bother here - he's trailing 7-4 against McGill. Ronnie had a chance to go 5-1 up yesterday afternoon but went in off from the final red on a tricky table, then McGill won the last three frames of the session and has played well this morning to take the lead, including a total clearance of 126 just now. Ronnie's not looking great so far, he's done a couple of Williams-style break offs and his body language isn't looking great in his chair. Long way to go in this still and he could very easily counter attack to rattle off three frames in half an hour or similar.

[Discordant Resonance]

Went to 10-6 at the end of the session, but Ronnie appears to be in the zone now, rattling off the first two evening frames in double-quick time.

[longeared]

Ten all now at the interval. McGill has missed some pots that he was making this morning and is looking surprisingly nervous - he's beaten top players at the Crucible before so this is not a new situation for him. The crowd is the biggest we've seen so far and as usual on Friday night they're a pretty raucous bunch, all getting behind Ronnie as you might expect.

[Discordant Resonance]

10-10 now, McGill's decision making appears to have been marmalised by the pressure of the occasion.

[longeared]

Real character from McGill to make a total clearance of 136 and take it to a decider.

[Discordant Resonance]

Wouldn't be a surprise to see him take it now, when he's after steadying the ship.

[longeared]

Fucking hell, Ronnie makes 36, gets a kick on a red and the consequent loss of position sees him miss a long red a couple of balls later. McGill pots a red over the middle and clears up for the win. Ronnie's out and for the first time since turning pro he's gone through a full season without winning a tournament, McGill goes forward to face Bingham or Jones in the quarters. Very enjoyable evening's viewing courtesy of BBC4 and much better than having to watch Vanilla Ice.

[jwdd27]

The Robertson-Lisowski highlights were on after the main programme, very high quality, I've decided Lisowski is my new favourite player - left handed, from Churchdown where my mother is from, and descended from Ukrainian/Polish like my wife. Very easy on the eye, snooker-wise as well.

He's also got a Platini face, in that he simultaneously resembles several other disparate celebrities - I've got Scott Parker, Mark Wahlberg and Benedict Cumberbatch so far.

[Sam]

I'm on the short-form videos as usual (will try and source a full-length one for the last session or two of the final), and Ronnie v McGill was fascinating. I missed the kick Ronnie got (the channel I found doesn't replay anything, just shows each shot once and then skips forward to the next) but did a small jump out of my seat when he missed the red.

Have just watched the second session of Robertson v Lisowski and as jwdd27 says it was good stuff. As seemed to be Williams v Higgins, of which I half-watched a session and a bit while doing a bit of work earlier. Now catching up on Murphy v Davis.

[longeared]

Previously I've never really rated Lisowski all that much - he was a brilliant potter, but the rest of the package was lacking. He'd regularly go to pieces in big matches, he got beat 13-1 by Higgins at this stage a few years ago and he's still to win a ranking tournament. I've been impressed with him this season though, he's reached a couple of finals and had the bad luck to run into Judd in them. He's been good here too, he beat Carter in an entertaining if flawed tussle, it was a dogged performance and the sort of match he'd definitely have lost a couple of years ago. He's played well against Robbo as well, stayed in touch and not made elementary mistakes to let his opponent in. Not always a left handed player by the way, does occasionally switch to the right.

[longeared]

Kyren Wilson's won five frames on the spin this morning to knock Robertson out. Set the tone in the opening frame when Robbo did one of the "new" break offs, left a red and Kyren went and made a total clearance of 133. He barely missed a ball after that and like the previous rounds has grown into the match as it went on. He'll play Murphy or Trump in the semis. Robertson really does seem to have a problem with the latter stages at the Crucible, he breezed through the first couple of rounds then started playing differently as he slowed down. He's always been better when he plays quickly, when he has to consider things he starts to overthink and makes mistakes and that's happened again here.

Mark Selby's looked good all tournament and is 10-3 up on Mark Williams on the other table, so that might be over with a session to spare. He'll face Bingham or McGill in the semis which is a match which you would expect him to win.

[David Agnew]

Robertson is always guaranteed to have at least one session and at least one outright shocker. Kyren is just one of those players without a weakness (except maybe temperament), but unlike some of those players (Barry Hawkins immediately springs to mind), he's got a couple of aspects of his game that he's great at, rather than good. He'd probably prefer to play Trump, as their head-to-head is relatively close, and Kyren beat him here last season, but Kyren hasn't beaten Murphy since 2013 (unless you want to count the best of three they had in the WST Pro Series earlier in the year that Kyren won 2-0).

Selby's been outstanding all tournament. Barely missed a pot, barely left his opponents anything. It helps that he's faced three potters in Maflin, Allen and Williams, so he can just wait and frustrate. Chris Henry's managed to talk Selby into playing the first shot that comes to mind, to stop him second guessing himself. That will make a huge difference to his chance of winning it, as will the margins he's won by. It took Selby so long to win it, because he kept tiring himself out mentally, by doing daft things like spending half an hour chasing snookers when 12-4 up (v Hendry in 2011).

Bingham's levelled their match at 10-10. If Bingham wins, I can't see him getting close to Selby. If McGill gets through, it depends which one turns up. At various times over the tournament, he's been absolutely unplayable, at others unbearable, and it only seems to take the slightest thing to switch from one to the other. He went from 6-4 down to 10-7 up, and Bingham taking one of the two chances he had to win that frame (he didn't score in five of the frames McGill won). At 10-8, McGill missed a black off the spot because he was concentrating on position too much, and that's the sort of thing that might seem him need a bit of time to recover from, which he doesn't really have.

[longeared]

Now Trump's out too, clawed back a four frame deficit to level it at 11 all, but then missed chances in both of the next two frames and Murphy was able to hold his nerve for the win. Does feel sometimes that Judd can be a bit of a flat track bully, he's won an incredible eleven ranking tournaments over the last couple of seasons but hasn't won a triple crown event in that time, even though he was a missed pink away from the UK and was Covided out of the Masters. Murphy plays Wilson in the semis with Bingham - Selby in the other. Yours to lose from here, Mark.

[David Agnew]

Judd had an incredible run of matches over the best of 7, where he won 28 in a row, ending at the Welsh Open where Hossein Vafaei beat him 4-2.The run covered the opening rounds of this season's World Grand Prix, the Scottish Open, the Northern Ireland Open, the English Open, and last season's Gibraltar Open and Welsh Open.

Now the old pros are banging on about the miss rule, because of all the points Wilson gave away in frame 10. None of them pointed out why the rule came in. Steve Davis says that it's so that you don't 'deliberately' foul, but the reality is, that it came in because players were taking the hit of a single foul by trying a more difficult escape, rather than a simpler one that would leave their opponents on. Which is exactly what Wilson did. He only needed to come off one cushion to hit a red, and as soon as he decided to come off more cushions (three in this case) the miss rule has to apply, because he increases the difficulty in the shot, rather than taking an easier legal shot that's more likely to let Murphy in. It was exactly the type of escape the miss rule was designed for.

[longeared]

I didn't see the incident in question, but Davis always seems to have a bee in his bonnet about the miss rule and time was you could be assured he'd have a top quality moan about it at some stage of the championship. This match might be done with a session to spare - 10-4 Wilson at present, and he's playing ever so well, just made a total clearance of 131.

[longeared]

Or maybe there won't be an early finish as Wilson gets in first in both the remaining frames, breaks down and Murphy goes and clears up to reduce the deficit to 10-6. Then Murphy walks off celebrating like he's won the whole tournament, the classless fuck.

[longeared]

The 22nd frame in Selby - Bingham has just been re-racked twice. Never seen that before! Hendry pointed out on commentary they'd spent fourteen and an half minutes doing all that across the two attempts to play the frame. Earlier on they went half an hour without either of them potting a ball. Bingham's won all five frames this evening and is getting the crowd on his side, so Selby's slowing the game down massively - at one point he got warned by the referee for taking three minutes over his choice of shot, which is still nowhere near the time earlier in the season he took six minutes to do the same.

[jwdd27]

I watched the final frame of the session, which was the best part of an hour, including getting on for half an hour without a ball being potted. Bingham eventually fluked two reds at once, leaving Selby needing 5 snookers, which he of course tried to get. Not quite Thorburn-Griffiths, but still fairly tedious. Bingham 13-11 to resume Saturday afternoon, I still fancy Selby to prevail.

[longeared]

I gave up on that final frame - Bingham was 63-0 up with five or six reds left, all of which had been knocked onto the side cushion when I decided this was going to take bloody ages so went to bed. They showed a graphic earlier that gave the average shot times for the evening session, Bingham was on 30 seconds which demonstrated the nature of the hard gritty matchplay snooker they'd been playing whereas Selby was at a whacking 39 seconds, which is proper slow by any circumstances.

I think Selby will eventually grind his way through as well, it might not be pretty, it might take a while and it might need Bingham to tighten up if he gets close to the winning line.

[Discordant Resonance]

And they've somehow contrived to be even slower this afternoon, which hardly seemed possible.

[Discordant Resonance]

Yet another re-rack!

[longeared]

Thirty one minutes there, eight points each and they've had to rerack!