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Sports calendar: The Big 10 for 2010

Having taken advantage of one or two quieter moments over the festive season to scour the schedules for the year ahead, quantumofsport.com is proud to present its brand new “Sports calendar 2010”. As ever, it will be a busy 12 months in the world of sport, with a range of top events competing for our attention. The calendar represents our (non-exhaustive) selection of what to look out for. We’ve also picked out – here below – ten of the biggest sporting occasions of the year, restricting ourselves to one entry for each sport we cover on a regular basis: it’s The Big 10 for 2010. Let’s hope there’s plenty of drama in store…

Feb 6-Mar 20, Six Nations rugby (for N. hemisphere fans at least!)
Feb 12-28, Winter Olympics, Vancouver, Canada
Apr 17-May 3, snooker World Championship, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield
May 16, Formula 1 Monaco GP (or any other between Mar 14 and Nov 14!)
Jun 11-Jul 11, soccer World Cup, South Africa
Jun 21-Jul 4, Wimbledon tennis
Jul 3-25, Tour de France (starting in Rotterdam and Brussels)
Oct 1-3, Ryder Cup golf, Celtic Manor, Wales
Oct 3-14, Commonwealth Games, New Delhi, India
Nov 25->, Ashes Test cricket series Australia v England

For the full calendar, click here.

Jimmy White: last chance saloon for the Whirlwind at 2010 snooker Masters

Every so often the time comes to bid a fond farewell to a sporting hero, and January’s Masters snooker tournament may prove to be just such an occasion for legend of the green baize, Jimmy White. The Whirlwind has been granted a controversial wildcard for the event that runs from January 10 to 17 at Wembley Arena, London, giving him what looks for all the world like one final fling at the snooker big-time. Will the veteran cue-man be able to grasp the opportunity and use it as a springboard to a fairy-tale Indian summer, or will it be an appearance that signals the end of a brilliant – yet tantalisingly incomplete – snooker career?

6-red snooker: the new Twenty20 cricket?

As it says on the tin, it is played with six reds instead of the usual 15 and some say it could be snooker’s answer to quick-fire Twenty20 cricket. The inaugural 6-Red World Championship is to kick off tomorrow in Killarney, Ireland (15 to 18 December), and – in view of the recent debate about whether snooker needs to spice up its act (Snooker: towards a brave new world) – the event will be a timely opportunity to assess the credentials of this faster form of the sport. Exhilarating spectacle or not a true test of skill? In the snooker blogosphere, reaction to the 6-red variant ranges from those who see it as “farcical rubbish” to those who are happy to give it a chance. For this correspondent’s money, it does look rather ‘mickey mouse’ – especially with memories still fresh of the sort of drama that the 15-red original served up in the latter stages of the UK Championship that has just come to a conclusion. But one shouldn’t prejudge these things. You never quite know where they will lead – and it will be interesting to see what coverage the 6-Red World Championship generates (or not) in the mainstream press...

Snooker: towards a brave new world

What is happening to snooker? Amid claims that the sport has lost its lustre, plans were unveiled recently for a new, expanded World Snooker Tour. Then just days later the chairman of World Snooker was voted out and promoter Barry Hearn was set to be installed as the new snooker chief – immediately talking about a fresh approach and faster formats.

World Snooker said of its Tour idea that the intention was “to capitalise on the burgeoning interest in professional snooker in many countries around the world, and develop snooker’s professional circuit in a way similar to that of global sports such as tennis and golf”. The concept would envisage staging at least 15 ranking tournaments every year – a big increase on the mere 6 on the calendar in 2009/2010. Hearn has meanwhile said he would have a masterplan ready to show the players by the time of the World Championship in April 2010.

All this means the corridors are likely to be buzzing with speculation about the future of snooker at the UK Championship, regarded as the sport’s second biggest ranking event, which starts tomorrow in Telford (December 5-13). The question is: do we need to be worried about snooker’s state of health? If so, would a new international circuit or other masterplan be the right response? And what about the destiny of the World Championship?

Snooker Grand Prix 2009: The enigma that is Ding Junhui

In a battle between two young overseas aces, Neil Robertson of Australia dispatched an out-of-sorts Ding Junhui of China 9-4 in the final of the snooker Grand Prix in Glasgow, giving the Thunder from Down Under his fourth ranking tournament victory in as many years. It moved the jovial blonde-haired Aussie one ahead of Ding and Thailand's James Wattana on the all-time list of ranking victories by players from outside Britain and Ireland, in what was the first ranking final between two non-British players since Silvino Francisco beat Kirk Stevens to win the 1985 British Open.

The manner of the victory – coming after a painfully scrappy evening session at the Kelvin Hall – confirmed that 27-year old Robertson (currently world number 9) is not just an exceptionally talented potter (one of the best “single-ball potters” in the game, as they say) but also someone who has no qualms about grinding his way through some tough match-play. He will now have an eye on further major silverware. While Robertson impressed, the final was more interesting for what it said – or rather did not say – about the fortunes of 22-year old Ding – a player who looked like he would take the world by storm when he first came on the scene a few years ago only to struggle to live up to his initial promise.

In a somewhat voyeuristic way, watching snooker is as much about scrutinising the personality of the player as it is about the position of the balls on the baize, and Ding, unfortunately for him, has made for a fascinating subject. After turning professional in 2003, Ding was the Chinese Sensation as he won the China Open and the UK Championship in 2005 followed by the Northern Ireland Trophy in 2006, becoming the youngest player to win three ranking titles and looking very much like a future world champion.

The Chinese prodigy then struggled to continue his early successes: before the tournament in Glasgow, Ding had not reached a ranking semi-final for over three years. Was he beginning to feel the pressure of massive interest in his meteoric rise back home? In January 2007, Ding, on the verge of tears, lost in emotional circumstances to Ronnie O’Sullivan in the Masters final. Many felt - at least until his performance at this year’s Grand Prix - that he had never fully recovered from the episode. Or perhaps Ding’s was a case of the over-use in sporting circles of the term “potential” – making presumptions about future successes without taking into account the effect of a player increasingly becoming a ‘known quantity’. Ding’s lack of fluent English cannot have made things any easier for him.

Whatever the case, Ding’s achievement in reaching the latest Grand Prix final appeared to be a return to form for the world number 13, nicknamed “Enter The Dragon”. But a fragile performance against Robertson in that bitty evening session means there are still question marks hanging over the Chinese cue-man’s frame of mind. He never looked comfortable once he had fallen 5-4 behind after an epic 9th frame that lasted nearly an hour. As Robertson remorselessly dug out the remaining frames needed for victory, Ding missed too many balls and was roundly criticised by TV pundits for being too negative as he turned down pots or opportunities to split reds that he might have taken on in more confident mood. In short, the Dragon wasn’t being dragon-like enough. Ding can take confidence from reaching this final but, while Robertson goes from strength to strength, the manner of the runner-up’s display means this fascinating player from China is still snooker’s Great Enigma.