It’s the big one, The 2009 BetFred World Snooker Championships starts today from the legendary Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. (A Theatre that has incidentally had a refurbishment this year.)
The action starts live today from 10.00am (BST) – in about 20 minutes actually – you can watch it on BBC Interactive, Eurosport, Eurosport web player, BBC Online and BBC 2 (some coverage will be on BBC 1).
Today’s matches are the following:
10.00
- Ronnie O’Sullivan (Eng) v Stuart Bingham (Eng)
- Mark King (Eng) v Rory McLeod (Eng)
14.30
- Graeme Dott (Sco) v Barry Hawkins (Eng)
- Stephen Hendry (Sco) v Mark Williams (Wal)
19.00
- Ronnie O’Sullivan v Stuart Bingham (Eng)
- Ali Carter (Eng) v Gerard Greene (NI)
As always the reigning champion starts the defence of his title with the first match on. Bingham should not pose too much of a threat to Ronnie over the longer distance, that match actually concludes with the second session this evening.
Of the afternoon session, the one I will be watching will be two former world champions, Stephen Hendry (who underwent a resurgence in China recently) and a man who has performed well all season, breaking back into the top 16, Mark Williams. This should be a real cracker and I fancy Mark Williams as an outisde chance for this title.
King v McLeod and Dott v Hawkins in my opinion will be very close, they finish tomorrow. Ali Carter, who was predicted as a possible winner by Peter Ebdon this week has a reasonably easy start (again in my opinion) against Irishmen Gerard Greene.
So the action comes thick and fast over the next two weeks, I will make an update everyday so stay tuned or subscribe via RSS.
