Premier League snooker preview
The second week of Premier League snooker takes place tomorrow night with two cracking matches in prospect.
Mark Selby takes on Mark Williams, while Ronnie O’Sullivan plays Ding Junhui.
Selby and Williams are making their first appearances in the Premier League for this season, and it should be a great match. Selby is the reigning Masters champion after winning the prestigious tournament for the second time in three years at Wembley in January.
Selby reached the final in his debut appearance in the Premier League back in 2008, and was thumped 7-2 by O’Sullivan. He failed to make it in last year’s competition, but he is back this year. Last week, he reached the Shanghai Masters semi-finals, where he lost to eventual champion Ali Carter in the first ranking event of the season.
Williams is first up for the Jester from Leicester, and he comes off the back of a decent season after winning the China Open, his first ranking title for four years. The two-time world champion will relish the challenge of playing a feisty opponent and playing against the 25-second shot-clock. The Welsh potting machine has returned to form and the match could go the distance.
Williams dropped out of the top 16 rankings a few seasons ago and was on the brink of quitting the game. After more than five years since his last appearance in the Premier League, Williams thought he’d never be playing in the competition again. “It feels very good to be back in the Premier League,” he said.
“I wasn’t confident of getting back in the Premier League and I thought it was far away and the chance had gone. I was too far down the rankings and was never going to get a wildcard as you have be in the top six or seven to have a chance. For 12 to 18 months it looked like there was no way on earth that I would get up there but somehow I’ve managed to do so.
“I dropped down the rankings like a stone and at one stage I was at 47 and couldn’t see a way back to the top. But with a lot of hard work and practise I started to climb the rankings the right way. It’s a lot easier to fall down the rankings than to climb back up,” Williams added.
In the other match of the evening, O’Sullivan and Ding failed to win their opening matches. Ding was all at sea as he lost 5-1 to reigning Premier League champion Shaun Murphy, while O’Sullivan had to take a point against former winner Marco Fu in a 3-3 draw.
Murphy was in imperious form and began the defence of his title in dominating fashion. Ding had no answer, and if he thinks it doesn’t get tougher, well it does.
A match against O’Sullivan is always one to watch, and as the six-time champion of the Premier League, O’Sullivan is looking to avenge for last year’s defeat in the final to Murphy. He began this year’s Premier League campaign on the opening night against Fu, and it was a high-quality affair. O’Sullivan trailed all the time as Fu played exceptionally well. Despite knocking in two century breaks, the Rocket was unable to disrupt the rhythm of Fu, who took his chances when they were presented to him.
O’Sullivan didn’t play badly, and neither did Fu, so a draw at the end of the night was a fair result. O’Sullivan was unable to play at the Shanghai Masters last week as he pulled out due to personal reasons, but he will be back and might cause Ding a lot of problems.
Predictions: Mark Selby 3 Mark Williams 3, Ronnie O’Sullivan 4 Ding Junhui 2
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