18th August 2008
The BBC break the news that Bahrain are to host a World Ranking event this November, a tournament that has been added to the calendar at the 11th hour. Story below:
Bahrain get World Snooker Ranking Event
The Bahrain Championship, held in the capital Manama will run from the 8th-15th November and will feature the top 16 plus 16 qualifiers and 6 local wildcards.
This comes off the back of the bad news from 2 weeks ago when both 888.com and Saga Insurance pulled out of major sponsorship deals. It can only be healthy for the sport to have another territory represented on the ‘World Ranking Tour’.
Snooker in the Middle East is growing in popularity and a bringing a ranking event to the region can only further develop the following that snooker has.
I have always been an advocate of making it a true world tour and the only way to do this was by bringing ranking events to the calendar from other regions and countries outside of the UK and Ireland.
Money is the Middle East is also not in short supply so sponsorship of the event will not be difficult to find and it is excellent that we now have 8 ranking tournaments for the 08/09 season (including the World Championships.)
What this does mean is that the players will once again be very busy this side of the season with 5 of the 8 ranking events happening before December, I am sure the players will be delighted however that another tournament has been found and there is more chance for ranking points and more chance to earn a decen living from the game.
In my opinion the best news since the China Open!
