I remember reading this book an age ago and I thought maybe I should try writing about what the book is about really. I try and not be a pretentious book critic that are too engrossed into character development. That will probably happen when I get round to reading Framed by Ronnie O’Sullivan but thankfully, there is no plot here. Even at the start of the book, there is a lovely introduction of how the Crucible became the snooker venue that it is today, which I am sure many people didn’t know. I certainly didn’t. This book was published months ago, but I thought I give this a good punt!
This book does what it says on the tin: there is a fantastic selection of 20 Crucible matches since snooker finally found its home in Sheffield in 1979. Of course, everyone has their favourite matches that they are disappointed not to see. There is a little bit of me that wanted Dechawat Poomjaeng vs. Stephen Maguire (2013) to share the same pages as Dennis Taylor vs. Steve Davis (1985), but hopefully, there will be a The Crucible’s Shocking Matches in a few years time!
The book delves into each and every match in brilliant depth, whereby it emphasizes how every listed match is completely different. We have the iconic Dennis Taylor vs. Steve Davis (1985), watched by 18.5 million people and how the Northern Irishman caught sight of a premature opening of a bottle of champagne for Steve Davis at 8-0 down that spurred him on to the famous crown. We have the heartbreaking in Stephen Hendry vs. Jimmy White and how the Whirlwind managed to recover from such a devastating loss. Then we have the clash of heads in Peter Ebdon vs. Ronnie O’Sullivan (2005), where we looked into what was going through Ronnie’s mind during Ebdon’s slow and determined play. Finally, we have the match that got me into snooker in the first place: Judd Trump vs. Ding Junhui in 2011: the match where John Virgo described it as the “indictment of how the modern game is played.”
What is also interesting is that it takes into account from a variety of sources: newspaper clippings; photos; personal interviews and it slowly brings about any controversies outside of the green baize and how that had any impact. The match between Steve Davis vs. John Higgins (2010) is said to have influenced the outcome of the match between Neil Robertson vs. Martin Gould in the same arena and of course lead to the events of the match-fixing scandal in Kiev with undercover reporters from News of the World. That made his 2011 World Championship even sweeter, as we are provided more and more about the mental aspect of every game, how the comeback is made, how a player chocked and how a player battled his demons.
I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone interested in snooker. A lot of snooker history is so deep within the Crucible that you can hear Dennis Taylor commentating on you reading. I hope this is turned into a series of books where we understand the shocking matches; the controversial matches and of course, the most memorable. I am of course, happy to help (here’s hoping!)
Here is the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucibles-Greatest-Matches-Championship-Sheffield/dp/1785312847
This is my first brief book review. I appreciate any comments regarding this. This is just something different I have decided to do. Can’t live with countdowns and previews forever!
