Whilst aimlessly channel-flicking today, I came across something a bit different to my usual diet of Soccer Saturday and Friends re-runs. However, it wasn't something that would appeal to a mainstream audience in any part of the country and so it was on that graveyard sports channel ITV 4 - home of the Tour de France, the IPL and the Europa League. I'd read briefly about Power Snooker during the week and felt compelled to see it in action, live from the O2 Arena. This was more for research and time-filling purposes, rather than a deep-seated love of the sport of snooker. Nonetheless, Ronnie O'Sullivan's desired "X-Factor restyling" of the sport had arrived.
The rules in brief: each game last 30 minutes, the player with the most points wins after this time. There is a 20 second shot clock to keep the pace of the game up. One of the red balls is the designated Powerball, which triggers a 2 minute Powerplay where everything counts as double points. The area above the baulk line is designated the Powerzone. When the cue ball is in the Powerzone everything potted counts as double (4 x in a Powerplay). There are 9 reds instead of 15. Other than that, it's just plain snooker.
All this talk sounds ludicrous. Even more so when you see who's fronting ITV 4's coverage of this inaugral event. It's Matt Smith's - ITV's jack-of-all-trades, last seen fronting the channel's IPL coverage with some excitable Indian woman, whilst knowing nothing about cricket whatsoever. Peter Drury (of "Champions League when Clive Tyldsley is busy" fame) provided the commentary, alongside actual snooker expert Clive Everton. This disparate team added to the seemingly overworked use of the POWER- prefix did not bode well in my mind. The whole thing was described as being like "Mario Snooker for the Wii" by my perceptive flatmate. I really wanted to dislike it. I actually wanted to hate it.
And yet... I rather enjoyed it. I sat through the quarter-final match between Mark Selby and Ali Carter and saw a popular future for snooker. First came the introductions, the players striding out to Kasabian and Muse respectively, Selby looking as though he'd arrived straight from the Friday night lash, Carter interacting with the crowd dressed in a very yellow shirt. The whole atmosphere was a far cry from the hushed reverance of The Crucible. The audience, described by Drury as "prandial", owing to the early opening of the bar, cheered when the Powerball was sunk and counted down the final ten seconds, causing Carter to miss a relatively simple red. "LOSER!" shouted one presumably tipsy local. Carter smiled and replied with a thumbs-up - Alex Higgins would have dropped the man to the floor in seconds. The lighting and sound effects were all very space age, pointing to the future for a sport with flagging interest. As the game drew to a conclusion, Selby was in desperate need of a quick comeback and proceeded to pot everything with lightning efficiency. Alas, it was not to be on this occasion and it was Carter who took the victory.
Another part of the attraction is the clear discomfort of Drury and Everton every time a player got on the brown. The crowd's cheering and screams of "POT THE BROWN!" were pretty clear cut, yet our esteemed commentary team felt it wise to ignore this and not elude to any anal sex references. One day very soon, somebody will slip. It'll probably be Ron Atkinson.
This remodelling has clearly been based on the template left by Twenty20 cricket (no it's not just another reason for me to bring cricket into all of my posts!). Quicker play, convenient times, music adding to the drama and, clearly most importantly, easy access to the bar. At the moment, it will tend to appear a bit brainless (Selby was booed for playing a perfectly executed safety shot) as new fans adjust to the more traditional aspects of the game, but in time, the players will seek out new ways to exploit the new regulations and snooker will advance much more rapidly after the introduction of this new form of the game. So long as the World Championships are kept as the pinnacle of the game, the sport will succeed, but with a much wider fan-base.
If it ever gets off ITV 4 that is!
RM
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