A brief line of news tonight to alert you to the story at World Snooker explaining that there has been a late change of venue for the International Championship in Chengdu. The tournament will now be held at the Sichuan International Tennis Center, as opposed to the Sichuan Province Stadium, though no reason for the change has been given.
In related news, you can also view my updated drawsheet for the International Championship here at PSB, now including the wildcards for the tournament…
Having defeated Craig Steadman, Steve Davis, Alan McManus and Michael Holt to qualify for his maiden professional venue, India’s Pankaj Advani has taken the difficult decision to withdraw from the tournament, due to a clash of dates with this World Billiards Championship. Click below for more and to see how that affects the draw for the tournament…
Over the last four days, the EIS in Sheffield has played host to the qualifying rounds of the inaugural International Championship tournament, arguably snooker’s newest ‘major’ given the significant amount of prize money and ranking points on offer. As a result, every match has counted but as far as headline stories are concerned, there is only one place to start, click below for my review of the action…
Following Martin Gould’s victory at UKPTC2, the action continues this week in Sheffield as the European Tour 2 event will be whittled down to 32 players, who will be taken to the venue stages in Poland in the first week of October. You can view the drawsheet for the ‘pre-qualifying’ rounds here.
Soon to follow next week however will be qualifying rounds of the biggest tournament of the new season so far, the new International Championship, which with prize money and ranking points equivalent to that of the UK Championship on offer, has unsurprisingly seen all competing (ie no Stephen Hendry or Joe Jogia), players ranked inside the world’s not 64 enter.
The full qualifying draw was this week published by World Snooker and you can now view that here at PSB by clicking here, with an in-depth preview to follow on Saturday.
Hot on the heels of my earlier post highlighting speculation as to extension of the deadline for the UK Championship, it appears as though the long-running saga has tonight reached some sort of resolution as @grovesnooker has tonight tweeted:
“Good news. @ronnieo147 may be playing again. Contract clarified. Uk and international in china entered.”
As has been commented upon, to say that the contract has been clarified is an interesting choice of wording, though as ever we can only speculate as to what has been agreed between the parties, at least until any official statements are issued by either Ronnie or the governing body anyway.
While I am sure that a lot more detail will emerge from the mainstream press over the next couple of days, judging by the early response on Twitter, the initial reaction seems to be that his fellow players and fans alike are pleased to hear that the contract has now been signed and that O’Sullivan will apparently soon be back in competition, potentially making his comeback in the International Championship, which kicks off on 28th October 2012.
Update: Leading snooker journalist Hector Nunns has tonight tweeted the following:
“O’Sullivan signs and will play in UK. Read in Times, Mirror, Express etc. Requested 11th-hour meeting with Hearn. No major concessions”
Are you surprised to see him back so soon or was this to be expected? I tend to favour the latter, but then I did not expect him to be absent from the Premier League this season so it was a difficult one to call with any certainty.
Of course it remains to be seen how many events the reigning world champion chooses to enter, even with the contract signed as he retains the right to pick and choose events as he wishes. I certainly cannot imagine him rushing to enter many of the upcoming PTC events, but come the ‘majors’ I would be surprised to see him not part of the tournaments.
More will surely follow…
It might still be July, but already we are closing in on the first seedings revision of the season, which will determine the seedings for the new International Championship, a tournament which will effectively have equal status with the UK Championship.
Click below for my breakdown of who can still make a move at what will be the final event before the cut, UKPTC2…
Interesting news today as World Snooker and CCTV announced China’s fifth full-ranking event, the new International Championship, which will be staged for the next five years and feature the largest top prize ever for a snooker event in Asia. Click below for a summary of all of the key points from today’s launch…