Revisiting Snooker’s great moments: 1985 World Championship Final – Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor
26 years ago in the final of 1985 World Snooker Championship history was made between Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis.
The match which was voted as the 9th greatest sporting moment of all time in 2002 by a Channel 4 poll. The match that drew a record audience of 18.5 million people that night, is also known as the Black Ball Finish.
It was a best-of-35 frame match where Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor had a nail-biting finish in the last deciding frame, which went on for 68 minutes on the black ball. In the first session Steve who also was the defending champion outplayed Dennis Taylor
completely leading by a score 7-0 which then was extended to 8-0 later on, when Dennis bounced back also winning straight frames and made the scores 9-7, which was then made 11-11. The players traded frames from there until Steve again went ahead by 15-17
and needed one more frame to win but Dennis again clawed his way back making scores 17-17 and the match went into the deciding frame.
The last frame consisted of a lot of safety shots and went on for 68 minutes. Both players had gone completely into pressure and were not able to pot easy balls, breathing and sitting long in their chairs talking to themselves was shown many a times by the
cameramen. The commentator Ted Lowe was sounding in even more pressure while commenting on them.
The match went on the colour balls where Steve had a lead of 13 points when Dennis also gave him an easy yellow ball which he potted from the rest went on the green and snookered Dennis unintentionally. Dennis broke it but Steve fluked it in the next shot.
Steve now needed just a brown when after exchanging some safety shots Dennis potted all three brown, blue and pink in a row. He also tried the black’s double but it did not go in.
Again a few safety shots were played on the last black by both players who took a lot of time playing every single shot. Both players got fair enough chances to pot the black but they kept missing simple shots as they were not able to deal with the pressure.
However Dennis potted it when Steve missed a simple cut leaving him on a straight black.
In the celebration of this great event which occurred 25 years ago a one frame re-match between the two players was held at the same place where the scores were made 17-17 once again.
Although it was found one of the funniest matches the audience and the viewers would have ever watched as both the players when were called in they had quite weird looks. When Dennis Taylor was called upon by the announcer he had pretty large glasses on
his face and on the other side Steve Davis after receiving a huge round of applause came with pretty long hair on his head. They had adopted this getup to show that the things for them have not changed even after 25 years.
Commentators Taylor and Thorne could hardly comment, as during the whole match Steve and Dennis made the crowd laugh, relating their each shot to the one they had played 25 years back. At the end they held the black ball in their hands and started executing
all the shots they had missed.
The crowd was delighted and the comments from the players were noteworthy. However when they were asked in the start about the 1985 final Dennis said that it was not him, rather snooker was the winner that night.
Although it was all fun but the positive spirit of both players for the game and the way they made crowd laugh that night, the re-match also made its place and is remembered.
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