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Williams 0-2 Zhao (1-3) Andrew Benton emails thusly: “Just to note that Zhao is his surname, Xintong his first names, so it’d be: Williams 0-1 Zhao. Chinese names usually have the surname first.” Thanks, you’re not the first to message on this point; i guess in the snooker world, for whatever reason it’s been flip-turned upside down, with Chinese players referred to by their surnames, but as first names – your Ding Junhuis, Xu Sis, Pang Junxus and Wu Yizes of this world. Wu, by the way, is every bit as talented as Zhao – he pushed Mark hard in round one – he just needs to lift his mental game to the same stratosphere as his technical game. As soon as he does, he’ll start winning the bigguns and maybe even before. Meantime, Mark leaves a nasty one near left corner, Zhao pumps it home … then massively underdoes a cut-back along the side that doesn’t get that close to left corner. Can Mark capitalise?
Williams 0-2 Xintong Zhao removes the balls, finishing with a ton. Already, you feel Mark must win one of the next two.
The first time they met 🤩
An exhibition we organised for Mark in China. Xintong won 2-1 making a century break🔥🔥🔥
Zhao Xintong was 13 pic.twitter.com/lgFKf5FnHs
Williams 0-1 Zhao (38-44) Zhao forges in front and there’s no sense he’s going to miss. He is very, very special.
Williams 0-1 Xintong (38-28) “Unreported Mark Williams stat,” begins Gregory Phillip, also class of ’92 (South East Essex Sixth Form College). “Or, to make it clickbait: YOU WOnT BELIEVE THIS STAT ABOUT MARK WILLIAMS!!! If he wins, he will obliterate the record for longest gap between first and last world championship wins, even going back to the Joe & Fred Davis challenger era.
In fact, he’s already equalled the longest span between final appearances at 26 years: Fred Davis between 1940 and 1966. Williams is a marvel, and yet this could be the dawn of the Xintong era.”
I strongly fancy Zhao, I must say and, as I type, he outlasts Mark in a safety exchange – a very good sign –picking a plant to middle before beginning the routine task – for him – of clearing enough balls to take the frame.
Williams 0-1 Xintong (38-0) Mark breaks pack off black … and it doesn’t go well, so that’s end of break. Zhao, incidentally, plays that shot better than anyone I’ve ever seen, especially off that black – a harder task than from the other end, off the blue. Watch out for it as the match progresses.
Williams 0-1 Xintong (15-0) Zhao plays into the pack and back to baulk, leaving a red stuck to the side rail just above left corner. Mark didn’t turn many down against Judd but if he can’t force this home he’s leaving loads … but he does. Also in that match, though, both players missed balls you didn’t expect them to, often soon after nailing a banger … and as I type, TWPM jiggers one you don’t expect him to … then Zhao does the same, leaving a second chance for Mark to accumulate.
Williams 0-1 Xintong “He does look born to play here,” says Stephen, as Zhao clears the colours, adding a 77 to his 51, and his imperviousness to pressure is almost disquieting.
Williams 0-0 Xintong (0-65) Mark goes at a longun but can’t clip from middle to left corner, and that’ll surely be the frame.
Williams 0-0 Xintong (0-64) Email! “Battle of the dragons: Chinese v Welsh,” begins Andrew Goudie. “I hope they’ve invited Tony Drago(n) from Malta, also famous for having a dragon on its flag.” And the quickest player ever; him and Jimmy White were quite the doubles partnership. Anyroad, Zhao flukes a red, snuggles up to the brown, and Mark misses his escape … twice … thrice … before hitting. There are 85 points left on the table.
Williams 0-0 Xintong (0-51) The last qualifier to win the worlds was Shaun Murphy in 2025, but Zhao’s started like he means it. He breaks the pack nicely … then a lax positional shot means end of break; he does well not to attempt a wild pot, fired by disappointment, and to play a decent safety.
Williams 0-0 Xintong (0-22) “I’m always tinged with jealousy in my feelings when I’m in the box, not at the table,” says Stephen; the old mongrel never leaves. Then, off the break, Mark goes at a loose one, misses, and that is going to cost him. Zhao’s been so good in the balls this last fortnight, playing with rare power and precision, but the pressure he’s under now, seeking to become China’s first world champion, is of an entirely different order to anything he’s experienced before. But he seems entirely unaffected and already seems to fashioning a frame-winning opportunity.
Our boyz baize! I cannot wait for this, and what an atmosphere in the Cruce. Zhao and Mark shake hands over the little lady, then it’s time to get going, The Cyclone to break.
Rob Walker has on his best tweed three-piece – he’s just so simultanouelsy classy and zany, I thought to myself when I saw it – and he’ll soon have stopped banging on, allowing us to enjoy the match.
Our players are ready to come out. Zhao is 28 but could pass for 18; Mark is 50, but could easily pass for 55.
I’m watching on BBC because somehow it feels right, but if it’s serious analysis you’re after, TNT/Discovery do that much better.
Judd Trump, then. I must say i thought this time, more than any other time, he’d get it right. He’s been so, so good this season and, as the draw opened out, it became increasingly difficult to see who’d beat him – every time he was challenged before the semi, particularly against Luca Brecel in the last eight, he stomped on the gas and tore off into the distance. I actually thought, when he led 5-3 after the first session, that the lead would be definitive, because he’d hit a seam at some point in the second and full away. And you can be sure I said that in full knowledge of Mark J’s genius; I just relied on Judd’s being geniuser. It’s unbelievable that a player of his standard, who’s dominated the tour over several years, only has one of these; he’ll be back, and much as he protests to the contrary, he knows that the world title is the ultimate, however many various ranking titles he collects.
I see both sides.
Preamble
We say this every year, but it bears annual repetition. In life, there are few things – or people – or divinities – on which we can rely never, ever to disappoint us. But the World Snooker Championships are one such, and the last fortnight has bestowed upon us another jazzer.
That’s not to say it’s the same vibe every year, far from it. Once upon a time, this tournament confirmed the identity of the best player in the world – Steve Davis through the 80s, Stephen Hendry the 90s – but now, though Judd Trump has dominated the last few years, he’s won this trophy only once because he standard is so high anyone in the field can beat anyone else in the field.
As such, we’ve had six different world champions in the last seven years, three of them first-time winners. It’s unlikely many, if any of us, expected to spend the bank holiday weekend obsessed with Zhao Xintong v Mark J Williams.
Which is to say that nowadays, our tournament does still confirms the identity of the best player in the world, but only during these last two weeks. In theory, this is a lesser outcome – our players come and go, so don’t represent our family heritage in the way our teams do – but in practice, even individual sport isn’t solely about facts, rather about people and their stories, which exist in thrillingly inexhaustible supply.
In any case, it doesn’t really make sense to say Mark J Williams comes and goes, given he first contested a final in 1999, then picked up the pot in 2000. Except it also kind of does, given he was set to quit the game in 2018, disgusted by the waning of his considerable powers. But his wife, Jo, persuaded him to continue, he miraculously, affirmingly, snaffled the title for the third time, and since then has re-established himself as part of the elite, a one-off technician with a unique snooker brain, and one of the greatest big-match temperaments we’ve ever seen – in any sport. Already an indisputable great of the game, a fourth biggun would take him level with John Higgins and Mark Selby in the all-time list and make him the oldest world champ ever; what honours those’d be.
Standing in his way, though, is a redemption tale of mythological proportions. Zhao Xintong exploded into our consciousness in 2021-22, winning the UK Championships followed by the German Masters six weeks later. His long-to-mid-range potting was barely believable in the ferocity of its accuracy, so too his coruscating calm … and then, in 2023, he was suspended pending a match-fixing investigation, eventually receiving a 20-month ban for being party to another player fixing two matches and betting on matches himself. No, it wasn’t pretty; yes, he was young.
Since returning to the game, Zhao has devastated almost everything in his path – most recently Ronnie O’Sullivan – and arrives at this final in sensational form. But Mark J has made a career out of extinguishing exactly that, so turn on the telly, draw the curtains, and for the next two days, shut out everything that isn’t this. You’ll not regret it.
Start: 1pm BST
