Nicknames and snooker's identity crisis

As cricket’s ‘sexed-up’ alternative, the Indian Premier League, begins in its temporary home of South Africa, another quintessentially British sport has faced calls to reinvent itself.

Thousands of miles away from Twenty20’s pyrotechnics, the World Snooker Championships have been progressing to the calmer sounds of rustling sweet wrappers and coughing pensioners.

The Crucible’s gentle atmosphere, however, belies the tumult of the sport’s identity crisis. Those in charge at World Snooker have announced plans to trial a shorter format of the game, using six red balls instead of the conventional ten.

The decision is perhaps a reaction to Ronnie O’Sullivan’s request in January for the “entrepreneurial skills of Simon Cowell” to help inject some life into what the world number one claims to be a “dying” sport.

After all, the closest snooker has ever come to sexy is Kirk Stevens’ Saturday Night Fever-inspired white tuxedo.

O’Sullivan may have had a darts-styled introduction of a pub venue and bikini -clad women in mind but it seems that he had overlooked the unique glamour which snooker offers.

Tournament emcee Rob Walker is the man given the dubious responsibility of stirring excitement in the arena. If his cry of getting “the boys on the baize” fails to stir, however, he can turn to a rich source of nicknames.

Quarter-finalist Mark Selby has been dubbed the ‘Jester from Leicester’, a moniker which suggests a maverick cueman with a penchant for practical tricks at the table. In reality, though, Selby is a pale, wiry Midlander whose expression seldom changes from a look of deep gloom.

One of the sport’s newcomers, meanwhile, is the proud owner of a feistier pseudonym. Mark ‘The Pistol’ Allen has been referred to as a ‘street fighter’ by commentators but his contrived fist pumps make ‘Tiger’ Tim Henman’s self-motivational exercises look like the growls of an irate Romanian weightlifter.

There is one player who seems above the frolics of novelty alter-egos. According to the BBC, Ronnie O’Sullivan is a man so enigmatic that his profile pieces are required to be shot exclusively in slow-motion with the accompaniment of incongruously serious classical music.

O’Sullivan’s routine threats of retirement at the end of defeats are predictable but, without indulging in his melodramatic reflections, the BBC would have no icon on which to focus their coverage.

While snooker may have a dearth of brooding enigmas, we can be content with the plethora of wilfully naff nicknames, such as Stephen ‘The Wonder of Wiltshire’ Lee, Ali ‘Captain’ Carter and the, er, unforgettable Alan ‘Angles’ McManus.

As written for Leeds Student

Snooker? With Jazz? Nice.

In their classic ‘Snooker Loopy’, Chas and Dave promised to show us what they “could do with a load of balls and a snooker cue.” Their legacy continued during the final session of the recent Masters’ final, with Ray Stubbs heralding one frame as a showpiece of “snooker balls of steel.”

With such an apparent fixation with balls, snooker would appear to most onlookers to be in rude health. Not according to its finest player, Ronnie O’Sullivan, though. After beating Joe Perry in the first round, O’Sullivan bemoaned the “dying” sport, and mentioned that an X Factor-inspired Simon Cowell overhaul would be provide the necessary resuscitative lift.

The world number one thinks that a change similar to that seen in Britain’s other favourite pub sport, darts, would revitalise the game. "It needs someone with entrepreneurial skills like Simon Cowell who is in the modern world and more dynamic."

Another of snooker’s greats, Steve Davis, agrees that the sport needs a change, but appears to be fuelling the discussion with an interesting new twist, "For the last 25 years our association and players have tried to run their own game a bit Motown style.”

Motown – now there’s an idea for snooker’s hierarchy. It is not a Saturday evening exhibition of third-rate karaoke singers that can save the sport – it is jazz. The game’s bluesy future already seems a vivid prospect; the nostalgic witticisms of commentators Dennis Taylor and John Virgo would turn to calls of “bitchin’ long pot from Graeme Dott” or “Alan McManus - take it to the bridge, baby” , while Hazel Irvine’s chirpy presentation would make way for the Fast Show Jazz Club’s own Louis Balfour. Nice.

In the playing area itself, the compere could be replaced with a piano-accompanied, gravel-voiced jazz veteran, who would introduce players like members of his ensemble; “Playing tactically tonight, we have Mark ‘Smokey’ Selby, and on break-building, the Rocket himself, Mr Ronnie O’Sullivan.”

If O’Sullivan is after a more mainstream-friendly dash of pop culture, then we have the ideal fusion of faux sixties’ soul and contemporary chart music - Duffy. Perhaps she could sing entrance songs for players, as the piano plays standards in the background. Steve Davis’ cousin Miles could even provide posthumous trumpets.

It is a picture of glamour that far exceeds ‘The Rocket’s vision of an ITV screening of ‘Shaun Murphy Versus Stephen Lee On Ice’ – though such a spectacle would indeed provide an entertaining support act.