Snooker Update: The list of the top ten moments of the year 2010 continues
04. Mark Selby’s knock at Wembley
The final of the Masters, a non-ranking yet prestigious event has seen a heap of drama in the past decade; no one can forget the late Paul Hunter’s thrilling hat-tricks winning the tournament. John Higgins’s marvellous and enthralling clearance over Ronnie
the rocket in the 2006 final, and Ding Junhui’s teary eyes and emotions in 2007 has added a lot of drama to the event.
This year the final of the Masters happened to be another melodramatic encounter between Ronnie O’Sullivan and the Jester from Leicester Mark Selby. The final match had a bit of history to it. Ronnie the defending champion, won the last year’s Masters by
defeating Mark Selby in the final. Both the players met each other in the final battle once again this year.
This rematch between the two, added another episode to the list of dramatic finals of the event over the number of years. Ronnie O’Sullivan the defending champion made his way to the final of the tournament by defeating Neil Robertson, Peter Ebdon, and Mark
Williams. Whereas Mark Selby defeated Ding Junhui, Mark Allen, and Stephen Maguire to book his place in the final and avenge his last year’s defeat.
As an audience of 2,000 at the arena and millions in front of television sets watched, Ronnie led the match with three frames and extended his lead until the score-line rose to 9-6. Recovering from a 9-6 deficit with affirmative breaks of 62 and 108, Mark
Selby dragged the score-line to 9-9.
As Mark Selby has proved his composure and steely nerves over the years, he made a great fight-back, when Ronnie was just two frames away from winning the title for a consecutive second time.
Mark Selby dominated the decider with his marvellous snooker shots and enthusiasm. Mark avenged his last year’s defeat successfully, by claiming the titles in an astounding manner.
“That is the best final of my career so far, and I loved the atmosphere”
said the Leicester’s cueist.
Two cueists would not mind facing each other once again in the final of championship taking place in January, 2011.
03. Neil Robertson – Raising the Australian flag
After defending his Grand Prix title, Neil the Australian cueist looked in a great form as he proved it later on. Nick named “the thunder from down under” Robertson became the first Australian to win the world champion titles.
The final of the tournament was played between the scot Graeme Dott and Neil Robertson. The Melbourne machine started his journey to win the titles by beating the Irish Fergal O’Brien, Martin Gould, and the legendary Steve Davis in the quarter-final match.
Moving on to the best-of-33 frames semi-final match, Neil held his grounds and thrashed his way into the final by defeating world number seven Ali Carter.
Whereas Graeme Dott defeated Peter Ebdon, Stephen Maguire, Mark Allen in the quarter-final and Mark Selby in the semi-final to book his place in the final match of the most coveted event in world snooker.
The final of the 2010 world snooker championship was historic in a sense that both the contestants were non-British. As recorded, this was not the best final in the history of crucible, but it was significant in a way that it helped transporting the sport
to other parts of world.
Neil Robertson played great snooker throughout the tournament and maintained that standard in the final, as he led the match 9-7 before the end of the first day. Later in the second and final day of the match, Neil extended the lead and dragged the match
into the deciding frame, where he built an affirmative break of 53 putting the tense encounter to an end.
Neil Robertson is the only third non-British cueist after Ken Doherty and Cliff Thorburn to have won the world snooker championship, by convincingly beating Graeme Dott 18-13.
After the achievement of the Australian cueist, it is hoped that the sport of snooker will get a boost up and popularity all around the world. Nevertheless, it was a pressure game as Robertson said
“My mother came to see the final, obviously I knew what flare it had back home in Australia”.
To be continued..
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