Yesterday saw the conclusion of the last 64 round and, again, we got two “outsiders”, Martin O’Donnell and Sam Craigie, coming out the winners.

Here is the report by WST:

With the clock just shy of 1am, Martin O’Donnell sealed a 2-2 draw with world number five Mark Allen to reach the Group Winner’s phase of the Matchroom.Live Championship League in Milton Keynes.

Click here for Group Tables, Results and Fixtures and here for details of how to watch live.

The pair faced off in the pivotal match of the group, with Allen knowing only victory would put him through, due to O’Donnell’s superior frame difference.

After O’Donnell moved 1-0 up, Allen hit back with a break of 70 to restore parity. The Northern Irishman then moved 2-1 up by taking the third on the pink. However, a break of 62 in the final frame was enough for O’Donnell to seal the crucial draw.

O’Donnell had already secured wins in his opening two ties of the day. He defeated Michael White 3-0 and sealed a 3-1 victory over Nigel Bond by winning an hour long final frame.

“I am pleased to go through and think I played pretty well all day,” said O’Donnell, who will face Tom Ford, Liang Wenbo and Ben Woollaston in the next phase on Tuesday.

“I should have probably beaten Mark tonight, but I got the job done. I try until the end and have lots of fighting spirit in me. I knew, especially once I won the first frame, that whatever happens I would be in it until the end. I have been working really hard on the mental side of things and I’m pleased I made a good break in the end to finish off there, because two years ago I would have crumbled and he would have beaten me.”

On table two, Sam Craigie topped his group to join Ronnie O’Sullivan, Stuart Bingham and Harvey Chandler in Group C of the winner’s phase, which will play out on table one tomorrow.

Craigie faced Dominic Dale in a winner takes all clash this evening. He powered to an impressive 3-0 win, with breaks of 131, 71 and 123 to beat Dale in under 40 minutes.

Martin O’Donnell is 34. If we forget the shootout, his best performances are three quarter finals, and they all came last season. He’s a very slow player, and that contributed to the very late finish yesterday. He wasn’t the sole culprit though. In fact nobody played really well consistently in that group. The matches dragged because they weren’t potting the balls. Mark Allen appeared very rusty. Michael White, still only 28, is a pale shadow of the young promising amateur he once was. He will almost certainly be relegated at the end of the season and it is sad to see. He needs help.

Sam Craigie is 25, and, for at least ten years already has been identified as a very talented player. He is very dangerous on his day. On the main tour, his performances have been disappointing. He’s never got past the last 8 in any event, and even that happened only once. This season, he had only won three matches before this event, and he has been guilty of several no-shows or late arrivals. Those facts hint at either depression or demotivation. But he has played very well yesterday. Maybe the “forced” break, because of the lockdown, has helped him.

The last round 16 starts today. Group C features two top 16 players, Ronnie and Stuart Bingham, and two young outsiders, Harvey Chandler and Sam Craigie; that has banana skin written all over it. Group D doesn’t feature any current top player, but, this one promises to be extremely close: Tom Ford, Liang Wenbo, Ben Woollaston and Martin O’Donnell will be battling it, and some high scoring can be expected!

Yesterday produced another surprise winner, as Ashley Carty prevailed in Group 16, a group featuring the current number two in the rankings, Neil Robertson.

Here is report by WST:

Ashley Carty is the second young player, after Harvey Chandler last week, who nobody expected to win his group, played excellent stuff and sent the favourites packing. I really love this event, because it gives the likes of them the opportunity to show what they can do and how good they are.

How good they are comes to no surprise to me; I have watched them play in amateur events for years. They haven’t been able to bring that on the professional tour until now. Why? I have said this before and I’m saying it again: the current system is far too brutal, it doesn’t offer a path for development. The young players are set to play a top player in round 1, more often than not. With no money for first round losers they are put under extreme pressure. When playing on outside tables in qualifiers it’s hard to convince a sponsor to support you. This week, with £1000 guaranteed, and the certainty to get to play three matches on television, we have seen Ashley and Harvey blooming.

Young players should be seen as the future of the game – they are – and therefore worth investing into. Minimal prize money to first round losers should not be seen as rewarding mediocrity, it should be seen as an investment. Not all investments earn you a return, whatever your trade, but not investing is a sure path to decline.

The state of the amateur game is such that young players who qualify for the main tour aren’t ready. That’s plain for all to see. All very young players who had a modicum of success in the last years come from China, a country where there is a strong amateur scene, and where academies and structures are funded by the authorities in order to properly support the sport’s development.

I hope that snooker bosses will reflect on what happened this week, and consider going back to a tiered system, or a round-robin system, at least for some events. That would help the young players. I also hope that they come round the idea to pay minimal prize money to the first round losers. By playing they contribute to the tournament, win or lose they bring value to the events, the sponsors and the venue. It would only be fair and it would ease the pressure on them. Throwing people in a choppy sea and hope they learn to swim is bound to result in drowning for most, including many who had the potential to become champion swimmers.

It’s worth to remember that someone as good as Neil Robertson was relegated several times before finding his foot in the professional game. He wasn’t ready because, in his home country, the level of the amateur game was not as good at in the UK. For all his talent, it took him more than two years to get where he needed to be, and even in when he started to get the results, his game was still very raw. Those who watched him play back around 2007/2008 will remember. “If they are good enough, they will make it” simply isn’t true, every player is different and so are their circumstances.

And, as I’m at it anyway, I’d like to see a return of the points system, with events with similar formats being rewarded the same way. If there are no points available for losing a first match, whatever the round, there is no protection of the top players, quite the opposite as they are bound to face stronger opponents from the word go. It’s simple enough to understand. Players and fans would easily figure out what any player needs to do at any stage of the season to reach their goal. And, if sponsors want the big boys in their events, they will still need to put good money on the table.

I know that round-robins are not popular with some players, or with the bookies, because of “dead matches”, but that’s easy to avoid. With prize money depending on their place in the groups, players have an incentive to try their best even when they have no hope to progress anymore.

It’s always difficult to predict what you will get from Liang Wenbo. Yesterday, we got the best. When playing like this, he’s very entertaining, he goes for his shots and I like the fact that he shows his emotions all the time. Whatever he feels, you can read it on his face.

I won’t lie, I was expecting Mark Selby to top this group, even with such short format. But he didn’t, he came third. He was overtaken, not only by Liang who won the group, but also by Joe O’Connor, who managed to get a draw against the three times World Champion and score a 143 against him for good measure. This is, for now, the tournament highest break, and, for Joe, a new personal best in professional competition. Joe is very good to watch, very composed, without being slow, and very mature in his shot selection without being negative. One of the best features about this competition is that we get to see players on the main table that we very rarely see in “normal” competitions.

I got a bit upset with the ES commentator during the Selby v O’Connor match. I think that it was Philip Studd. Every odd shot he was going about what Joe O’Connor needed to do to secure his “third” place in the group table, seemingly never even considering that, with a 143 to his name, a draw with Mark Selby would put him in a good position to actually finish second.  True, this depended on Mark Selby’s result against Liang Wenbo, but anything  but a win from Selby was going to put O’Connor ahead of him, and, given Liang’s performances in his first two matches, that was far from impossible. Eventually, it’s exactly what happened.

I didn’t see anything from the other group, but that one went exactly as I expected. With Matthew Stevens withdrawing, I couldn’t see anybody in this group able to challenge Gary Wilson. Gary is a very talented player, and one, I feel, who can produce a very decent level even when short of practice.

Here is the report by WST:

Thursday 4 Jun 2020 11:11PM

Former English Open champion Liang Wenbo produced a superb showing, as he stormed to top spot in group five at the Matchroom.Live Championship League in Milton Keynes.

Click here for Group Tables, Results and Fixtures and here for details of how to watch live.

Liang now moves on to the Group Winner’s phase next week, where he will form part of group D on Tuesday. He secured his progression with a fine 3-0 defeat of three-time World Champion Mark Selby in the last tie of the day.

World number 34 Liang had already emphatically made his mark on the group with a 3-1 win over Joe O’Connor and a 3-0 defeat of Lee Walker. Throughout the day he compiled century runs of 100, 103 and 117.

“I enjoyed today,” said Liang. “Sometimes you have to enjoy the game and your game will come, snooker is like this, when you’re happy you play well. If I play like this, I will have a chance to win the tournament. I practised for seven or eight days before coming here, after two and a half months off.”

In the end former Welsh Open semi-finalist O’Connor finished second in the group. He defeated Walker 3-1 and made the highest break of the tournament and his career so far, a run of 143, in a 2-2 draw with Selby.

Elsewhere, Gary Wilson punctuated a day of heavy scoring by firing in four century breaks, as he swept to top spot in group 14.

Wilson, who reached the semi-finals of the 2019 World Championship, defeated Mitchell Mann and Gerard Greene 3-0 and secured a 3-1 win over John Astley. He made breaks of 100, 107, 125 and 134 in the process.

“I played okay, a few sloppy shots here and there but that’s to be expected when we’ve had a bit of time off,” said Wilson. “I think we have all come here not really knowing how we are going to play, so I was pleasantly surprised and played alright.

“Like everybody has expressed already, it has been really well organised, I don’t think there is anything you can fault. It has been really good to know it can go ahead like this.”

Ronnie is in action today, with Kishan Hirani, Michael Georgiou and Chris Wakelin in Group 10. It’s hard to know what to expect. Speaking to Hector Nunns, Ronnie said that he hadn’t practice at all since March, except for a few hours. That’s probaly true. When he did his first chat with Hendry on Instagram, he mentioned that they were moving to a new house, with lot of work still to be done in the new one (he explicitely mentioned the kitchen 😉). More recently, he also said to Hector that he had been running quite a lot. At the start of the lockdown he had been piling in the pounds and he wanted to get fit again.

Because of all that, my expectations aren’t high unlike those of Stephen Hendry and others who, on social media, said that they are impatient to see him play. Even in an event like this one, and despite the circumstances, there are a lot of expectations on Ronnie.

The other group today features Tom Ford, Robert Milkins, Mike Dunn and Ian Burns. On paper it’s a very open group. Both Tom Ford and Robert Milkins are very heavy scorers on their day, and this format will suit them.