Snooker’s next Ronnie O’Sullivan will come from China as World Championship taken over | Other | Sport

China, one of the world’s largest economies, has played a major role in shaping modern society over the last few hundred years. The home of papermaking, printing, gunpowder and the humble compass, many things we take for granted every day can be traced back to the Middle Kingdom. Now, the ancient nation could be about to make a seismic splash in a totally different field.

These days, there is a growing focus on snooker, which has experienced a popularity boom throughout China in recent decades. Last year, a record was broken when Zhao Xintong became the only Asian player to win the World Snooker Championship in its 99-year history. Although the 29-year-old was the first to bring the trophy back to China, he almost certainly won’t be the last.

That’s because a fully-fledged takeover is in progress, with Chinese players shaping up to dominate the sport over its next generation.

Snooker is no longer a niche hobby in that corner of the world. It’s a national phenomenon, thanks in part to the success of players like Ding Junhui and Yan Bingtao as well as rising talents like Zhang Anda.

The sport was already massive in China when Zhao defeated Mark Williams to achieve Crucible glory last year, and it’s only going to get bigger.

It’s regarded as a top-tier mainstream sport with an estimated 70 million players, which is essentially the entire population of the UK, and there are over 300,000 snooker clubs nationwide.

Children in schools often play snooker as part of the curriculum, with some dedicated academies training teenage prospects for up to eight hours a day.

That investment is now materialising at the highest level. There are 11 players from China in the first round of this year’s World Snooker Championship, more than ever before.

Even the all-time greats are sitting up and taking notice. Stephen Hendry believes Chinese players could dominate snooker in the years to come, given the successes of Ding and Zhao on the world stage.

“They all look like world beaters at the moment,” said Hendry in the wake of last year’s Crucible final. “It won’t be like this every tournament, but perhaps in five or 10 years it could happen a lot. It’s about players in the UK raising their standards to match them.”

Marco Fu, from Hong Kong, added: “There are many highly skilled Chinese players, but the previous generation of UK legends, like John Higgins, Mark Williams and Ronnie O’Sullivan, are now in their fifties and still performing exceptionally well.

“That’s part of what delayed this shift. I agree with Stephen. It’s highly likely that Chinese players will dominate this sport. It’s only a matter of time.”

With no sign of China’s snooker wave slowing down any time soon, the next O’Sullivan may well come from the land of calligraphy, kung fu, great walls, dumplings and giant pandas.

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