This is a special time of year for snooker fans but people can be strange and it’s amazing how some want to find things to complain about: when they haven’t actually happened.
The first ‘the World Championship is moving to China’ story was written in 2004 and they are still being written, despite a lack of actual evidence.
The World Championship isn’t moving to China any time soon, just as it wasn’t in 2004. Possibly a Ding Junhui victory at the Crucible would increase the financial pressure from China to scoop the game’s biggest event but the BBC will keep it in the UK as long as they broadcast it, and Barry Hearn wants it to stay at the Crucible.
Ignore everything else you have heard, these are the facts, although some are almost willing it to happen – so they can then complain about it.
The other thing people get upset about at this time of year is the format changing. For years we’ve heard matches will be shortened – except they haven’t been. And won’t be.
“It’s a bizarre format but it works” is how Hearn put it. He’s right. It’s not a format you would come up with today but it has stood the test of time. Every champion of the television age has had to pass more or less the same test.
(As an aside, it’s amusing how players who rail against format changes usually go on to suggest them themselves. Many feel the first two rounds are too long.)
If the World Championship were to leave the Crucible the format might change. But I’d be surprised if it wasn’t the same event and the same venue five years from now.
And doubtless we’d still be reading about how the World Championship was about to move to China.