Worldwide Sports News

The experiences of the world’s leading players are key to understanding snooker’s current unpredictability

Ostensibly, sport aims to answer one question: who is the best? Humans being humans, we naturally invest it with meaning beyond that – the teams we support are ours forever, a fixed part of our identity representing values and a way of life. We keep coming back because we have no choice.

Individual sports, though, are different, players necessarily transient, so what keeps us coming back is the competition itself. And for that reason, there is greater onus on it to provide a satisfying outcome: we want our world championships won by the best player in the world, and Kyren Wilson, snooker’s newly minted king – a terrific talent and worthy winner – is, on the face of it, no such thing.

• Welsh qualifier will face Kyren Wilson after shock run to final
• Jones hits back at beaten opponents’ complaints over his style

Jak Jones sealed his shock World Snooker Championship final place by beating Stuart Bingham 17-12 – and branded his beaten opponents “pathetic” for complaining about his playing style.

The world No 44 will face Kyren Wilson in the two-day final starting on Sunday after Wilson overcame David Gilbert 17-11. Both Bingham and Judd Trump, whom the Welshman beat in the last eight, implied that Jones’ frustrating tactics had affected their rhythm and ultimately contributed to their defeats.

• Only remaining seed holds 14-10 advantage
• Stuart Bingham and Jak Jones level at 8-8

Kyren Wilson needs three more frames to reach a second World Snooker Championship final after opening up a 14-10 lead over David Gilbert. The pair were tied at 8-8 after the morning session but Wilson, the only seed left, won six of the eight frames in the evening to take a commanding lead.

It would have been virtually game over had Gilbert not won the final frame with a break of 101, but he goes into Saturday’s final session as a big underdog, with the winner to face Stuart Bingham or Jak Jones, who are locked together at 8-8.

A world championship move away from its storied home would have implications in south Yorkshire beyond snooker

Picture the scene. There is live sport on a big screen, and on the artificial grass deckchairs are laid out, with pints of lager flowing. It sounds like a scene from continental Europe during a major football tournament: but this is Sheffield city centre on a grey, murky Friday morning.

It is perhaps fitting that Tudor Square, the part of Sheffield where the Crucible Theatre is situated, is dubbed the “Heart of the City” on the tourist information around town. Because for two weeks every year, snooker and its most iconic venue is at the beating heart of Sheffield – for now, at least.

• Bingham takes 3-0 lead but Welshman hits back to make it 4-4
• Kyren Wilson calls himself ‘a wally’ after missing chance of 147

There was little to pick between the last four in the World Snooker Championship, with Jak Jones fighting back to 4-4 in his semi-final against Stuart Bingham after Kyren Wilson and David Gilbert also battled to stalemate at the Crucible.

Wilson, the only seed left in the tournament, came from 3-2 and 4-3 down to go in level after the first session in Sheffield. But Jones produced an even braver comeback against the 2015 champion, recovering after a nervy and error-strewn start to turn a 3-0 deficit into parity by the end of the evening.

An act of decency is being hailed as the greatest sporting gesture ever. Politicians, business folk, celebrities – please take note

You may not be into snooker, dear reader. You may not be into sport at all. But really, this is not about sport. In losing yesterday to Stuart Bingham in the quarter-final of the World Snooker Championship, Ronnie O’Sullivan proved himself a contender for the world’s most sporting sports star. He may have lost, but in doing so he showed there are still standards in public life, and some people do care about doing the right thing. Not something we see often these days.

Here’s what happened. Yesterday afternoon, with Ronnie leading by six frames to five, he potted a black ball. When it was returned to its spot, it should have obstructed his next red ball, making it trickier for him to progress. But there was a tiny divot on the table, and the black ball wobbled ever so slightly from its spot, making access to the red simple. Ronnie wasn’t having any of it. He asked the ref time and again to replace the black to make it more difficult for him. But the black wasn’t having any of it either, and kept bobbling away.