Where were you on May Day 2023?
For snooker enthusiasts, there is an easy answer to the question: watching the World Cup final at the TV receiver or smart device.
The annual crown of the snooker season, with the exception of a few exceptional years, has been scheduled for May Day since 1977. Since then, the World Cup tournament has been organized in the Crucible Theater in Sheffield, England.
47 years have provided hundreds of magical moments that have made the Crucible Theater a spiritual home for snooker.
However, Sunday’s May Day in 2023 made it close to the top in the ranking of star moments and became an inseparable part of the sport’s history. Thanks went to the Englishman To Mark Selbywho bagged a streak of 147 points in the World Cup final, i.e. the maximum break.
Although maximum breaks are no longer as rare in snooker as they were, for example, in the 1980s, Selby became the first player in all time to make a magical break in the toughest of places, the World Cup final.
The maximum break crowned the way in which the 39-year-old Selby played the opening day of the World Cup final against the Belgian who was 11 years younger Luca Brecel against.
Two sides of Selby
This year’s World Cup final was a duel between generations and styles of play.
With his speed and aggressiveness, young Brecel would try to destabilize Selby, who is known as an overall champion, and who is known for his sometimes extreme safety game.
There were recent examples of this on Friday and Saturday, when Selby and Mark Allen twisted 32 sets out of the final place. The semi-final lasted more than 13 hours. Brecel and 20 years old Si Jiahui played the same number of sets five hours faster in the second semi-final.
Selby is known as a player who, regardless of the situation, ends up with the stroke that serves him the most in terms of percentage. Especially in the safety game, high-risk shots that, if successful, would bring the player a big reward, are not part of his playbook.
Selby is a master at making snookers, but he is willing to play the safe game even so that the game progresses painfully slowly for the viewer.
When Allen decided to challenge Selby in the semi-final with Selby’s own weapons, the end result was that the second period of the match had to be stopped when the schedule came up. The two had time to play only five sets in four hours, even though the episode was designed to be eight sets long.
Seven-time world champion of the sport Stephen Hendry said on the BBC that he didn’t like what he saw.
– It wasn’t pretty. I don’t want to watch this kind of snooker, but I understand that snooker is played in different ways. However, this erred on the side of caution. They would play more openly even sometimes, Hendry said.
In particular, Selby has received criticism over the years for his use of time in hitting situations. It is typical for him to often spend 1-3 minutes thinking about the shot selection, especially in the safety game, even though in the majority of situations the decision is ultimately awaited.
Selby had several dozen such situations against Allen alone. Of course, it must be stated that Allen was just as much to blame for the prolongation of the match as Selby. Of the two, however, Selby is the one whose shares rise the most as the matches become more difficult and longer.
There is no rule against playing snooker like Selby did against Allen in the second period of the match. It should also be remembered that Selby had 13 hitting streaks of more than 50 points in that match, three of which exceeded 100 points. On the other hand, this amount of quality in building at-bats begs the question, how could a match against Allen go 13 hours? When looking for answers, you shouldn’t ignore punch selections.
The semifinal in question was certainly on everyone’s mind following the World Championships when Selby and Brecel started the two-day final on May Day. Brecel played exactly as expected: he was aggressive and fast. However, Selby responded in kind and crowned a very entertaining opening day with a historic maximum break.
Selby played at a faster pace than before, and there was no hint of passivity spilling over in his game and excessive wasting of time in the selection of safe shots.
Despite the fact that Brecel enters the decisive May Day of the championship with a 9–8 lead, Selby played a strong evening session to make itself the favorite.
The most comprehensive package
Although Selby is a snooker player who strongly divides opinions, he approaches the perfect package in terms of characteristics.
He is able to win tournaments by playing an A-class game, where the opponent’s role is to watch Selby’s superstar break-making skills.
What makes Selby completely unique is the fact that he can win tournaments playing at his B or C level. In this case, the breaks play a smaller role as the safety game and mental endurance factors are emphasized.
Selby is already one of the most successful players of the sport in the modern era of snooker, which begins in 1969. In the world championships, Hendry and Ronnie O’Sullivan and six World Championship titles Ray Reardon and Steve Davis.
If Selby is crowned champion on Monday, it will be his fifth world championship in the last ten years. During that time, he has played in 23 ranking tournament finals, of which he has won 21. Every player in the star category has had to acknowledge Selby as better at least once.
Selby is undoubtedly one of the greatest snooker players of all time, whose strengths, in addition to technical and tactical abilities, are unyielding and commitment.
For many snooker players, Selby is an excellent example, especially in terms of commitment to the shot he has chosen. Selby is a model student in most of the executions of the shots.
The dark side, which pops up from time to time as a negative game, should not be allowed to influence too much when evaluating Selby’s career. But the bigger the match, the more negativity pushes through, the bigger the mark it leaves.
On May Day, the situation was different. Selby, who was seen on the World Cup stage, is a great market face as snooker tries to expand to new countries.
As the titles accumulate, Selby’s role is only emphasized. It is not at all excluded that in ten years the Leicester native will have passed Hendry and O’Sullivan and taken the number one spot in the number of world championships.
Hendry is recognized as the creator of aggressive modern snooker, the legacy of which O’Sullivan and his peers John Higgins and Mark Williams have continued successfully.
Selby has sought and found ways to cope with the aforementioned trio in an unprecedentedly tough competition at the top of snooker. These ways have not always been to the liking of opponents, experts and spectators. Hendry has criticized Selby’s way of playing before, but the biggest headlines on the subject belong to O’Sullivan, who recently called Selby a torturer.
There has been no information about this in this year’s World Cup final. In the lights of the Crucible theater, Selby has been seen, who has responded to Brecel’s challenge with the same measure – without forgetting the high-quality safety play that promotes game events.
And that is the best possible advertisement for snooker.