While the World Championship is currently taking place, World Snooker last week announced the entry list for the upcoming Q School as 124 players will battle it out for 12 places on the main tour next month and the quality of the field is even better than I had quite realised…
- To view the entry list please click here.
While some names are not so familiar, others certainly are, not least those players who having been relegated from the tour this season have decided to try to take advantage of the new system and regain their places with immediate effect. These include Zhang Anda, Kurt Maflin, James Wattana, Simon Bedford, James McBain, David Morris, Thanawat Thirapongpaiboon, Jak Jones, Adam Wicheard, Jamie O’Neill, David Gilbert, Kyren Wilson and Reanne Evans.
Similarly there are several players relegated from the tour at the end of the 2009/2010 season such as Li Hang, Stephen Craigie, Craig Steadman, Sam Baird and Thepchaiya Un-nooh who are all more than capable of coming through here and making an impact on the professional circuit next year.
Other notable names? Tian Pengfei has been the scourge of a few big names at the wildcard stage of Chinese events recently while Belgian prodigy Luca Brecel is also bidding to qualify, ironically having previously qualified on two occasions only to be denied by the now defunct age limit.
Other names you may recognise are Mike Hallett and Tony Knowles, veterans of a previous generation while at the other end of the scale, youngsters such as friend of the blog Michael Wasley and friend of Snookerbacker’s blog Allan Taylor will also be trying to earn their first shot at the big time.
I will post more on this following the World Championship but who are your 12 picks to progress?