Ding or Not to Ding?

[chrisfinch]

Habib Subah is one the tour for next season, i think he's from thailand and he beat jimmy michie in round one of the china open

[JanieWatkins]

Habib Subah is one the tour for next season, i think he's from thailand and he beat jimmy michie in round one of the china open

Habib Subah is from Bahrain

As well as Ding, watch out for Tian Pengfei, Liang Wenbo and Xiao Guodong.
Also Moh Keen Ho from Malaysia.

[TIMO147]

who knows who

there is many new young players coming through now that it is unlikely we wil see another multi winner such as davis hendry reardon etc even ronnie one of the greatest natural players ever to hold a cue. but ronnie has no respect for the "gentlemans game" or fellow players shame his head not right for it! who knows maybe an unknown?

[staryang]

Hi,

I am a chinese. In china, most ppl in north play 8-balls and most ppl in south play snooker. I think in next 5-10 years, there probly will be some good players like Ding. But UK will still be the best in this game. I played in both china and Uk snooker clubs, and the level of average in UK is a lot higher than china.

[oliviafuwei]

hi to my compatriate

glad to see so much compliment to my fav snooker player

Youth is Ding's asset but as time passes Ding will lose such advantage but i still put my faith in him to become world champion

influenced by Ding's success, many youngsters in China begin to play snooker. No doubt more Chinese will participate in the world snooker but dominate? well, i guess not...at least Mark Sleby will defend the European glory...hahaha

[hegeland]

How things stand today, according to moi:

If things continue in the direction they have for the last 5-10 years, we'll see at least 2-4 chinese players in the top 16 within 10-20 years. And that's a pretty remarkable development.

But that scenario depends on the future success of Ding and a few other players currently on or nearly on the Main Tour. If they would start to decline instead of rising in the ranks, you can be quite sure CCTV won't show as much snooker as they have done lately. WSA are trying to prevent this from happening by holding two ranking tournaments each year in China. If snooker wouldn't be shown on CCTV you can be quite sure the interest of snooker in China will start to fade.

As I see it there are three main factors that determines the future of snooker in China (or any country really)

1. TV coverage.
2. Domestic players doing well.
3. Prize money.

If WSA can sort at least two out of these three things right, there is no doubt in my book that snooker has a bright future in that region.

[DartsMadJohn]

Snooker will continue to grow in China as long as new young players are coming up the rankings, because I can't see Ding being the lone star for 5-10 years - I think the pressure will end up being too much and he'll start to decline.

Everybody talks about China being the new hotbed, but at the moment who do they really have besides Ding? Liang has only just survived on the tour for the last few seasons, Tian has only just kept his place, Liu Song I think only qualified for one event this season, and Jin Long fell off the tour a few years back and hasn't returned. Xiao Guodong looks promising, but I think that a second Chinese player needs to establish himself on the Tour, because Ding mania won't last forever.

Edited for typos

[Alex0paul]

Yu DeLu is also a promising talent. I think he is still in his mid teens and won his wild card round match in this years and last years China Open. Also last year he took defending champion Ding Junhui to the wire losing 5-4. Hopefully he can qualify onto the main tour soon. I think the main problem is that there isn't enough openings for Asian players to get onto the main tour. Personally I think Asia should have its own seperate amataur tour where the top 4,5, or 6 players win a ticket to the main tour.

[DartsMadJohn]

It would be great if the Main Tour awarded places to more countries, but IMHO you would need to expand the tour to 128 players for that to happen, and given the prize money situation on the current 96-man tour, it just isn't feasible at the moment.

If the tour ever reverted back to 128 players, do you think the cut-off point for keeping your place should remain the top 64, or would you expand it down to 72 or maybe even 96?

Also, where would the extra players come from? The Asian champion, runner up and U21 champion all get places - maybe give places to the Thai, Chinese and Indian national champions? You could put Pakistan in that list, but I don't know if they have anyone playing to a decent standard besides Shokat Ali. Maybe expand the number of main tour spots available to Oceania, and give North America a place?

Another option would be to replace the PIOS with a different amateur tour - if there is enough money and/or sponsorship you could run one for Europe and one for Asia, and have them operate as a kind of second division below the Main Tour, but where (unlike the PIOS) players could actually make some kind of living - I put a post in the Amateur Snooker section that goes on (well, really it rants on) about this kind of idea.

I wouldn't want to expand the PIOS qualfiying to 12-16 Tour places, or give any more places to the UK national tours, because that would just make the sport even more heavily based around the UK than it is now, and let's be honest, the playes who have qualified through the national rankings like Leadbetter, McGlinchey, Stephen etc. haven't exactly set the world alight, have they?