This season has been an odd one, to be honest. Three ranking events. Two first-time ranking winners. And now Mark Williams has won the Six Reds World Championship, by beating Thepchiaya Un-Nooh 8-2. How time flies, huh?
It’s been two weeks since we had a ranking event. And the Indian Open is a funny one. This tournament has been present on the snooker calendar for four seasons now and it helped a number of players make their first breakthrough. In the first year, there was the first all-Indian quarter-final tie in a ranking event (between Pankaj Advani and Aditya Mehta). The winner of the tie (Aditya Mehta) became the first Indian to reach a ranking semi-final and final before being whitewashed by Ding Junhui 5-0.
The past two installments resulted in two players winning their first ranking title. Shortly after winning the Snooker Shoot-Out, Michael White won his first ranking title by thrashing Ricky Walden 5-0. The next year, then No.28 Anthony McGill won his first ranking title against Kyren Wilson by beating him 5-2. Both of these players reached the Top 16 in the rankings and recently helped themselves to their second ranking title.
We reached New Dehli, Mumbai, and Hyderabad: now we are in Vishakhapatnam (had to copy and paste that one otherwise I would be misspelling that one all day). Sole Indian pro Mehta has an unfortunate tie by playing defending champion McGill in the first round. Though it is sad not to see 12-time billiard champion and 2015 IBSF World Snooker Championship winner Advani in the draw, there are a number of Indian amateurs to flex their muscles against the professionals. With nine out of the current Top 16 players skipping the event, as well as Ali Carter and Kyren Wilson losing in the first round, this means that we will likely see a Paul Hunter Classic-style breakthrough from lower-ranked players. Last season, we saw Akani Songsermsawad and amateur David Lilley reach the quarter finals and Nigel Bond advance to the semis, so there is no reason it shouldn’t happen here!
So what do we have here then? Well, in the top quarter of the draw, there isn’t one Top 16 player there, leaving players such as in-form players Tom Ford, Ken Doherty and China Championship semi-finalist Li Hang to take advantage. Then we have a tough second quarter featuring Bingham, Selt, King, Dott, Perry, and Murphy battling it out! The next third is also tricky, though ties and this presents a great opportunity for Hull, Xu, S O’Sullivan and Boileau to get some much-needed points. The last quarter has some really interesting ties, such as in-form Gary Wilson against China Championship winner Luca Brecel, Maguire vs. Songsermawaddywaddy and lastly hot prospect Zhao Xintong will face the Wizard of Whishaw John Higgins.
Let’s do this!
Anthony McGill/Aditya Mehta vs. Ashley Hugill
Jackson Page (a) vs. Rory McLeod
Anthony Hamilton vs. Hossein Vafaei
Gerard Greene vs. Li Hang/S Shrikrishna (a)
Tian Pengfei vs. Tom Ford
Zhang Anda vs. Soheil Vahedi
Sam Baird/Lucky Vatnani (a) vs. Mark Davis/Laxman Rawat
John Astley vs. Ken Doherty
Quarter-Final: Li Hang vs. Tom Ford
Stuart Bingham vs. Duane Jones
Matthew Selt vs. Cao Yupeng
Mark King vs. Adam Duffy
Graeme Dott vs. Jack Lisowski
Elliott Slessor vs. Alan McManus/Malkeet Singh (a)
Daniel Wells vs. Joe Perry
Jimmy Robertson vs. Fergal O’Brien
Hammad Miah vs. Shaun Murphy/E Pandurangaiah (a)
Quarter-Final: Mark King vs. Shaun Murphy
Robin Hull vs. Xu Si
Sean O’Sullivan vs. Josh Boileau
Ricky Walden vs. Alfie Burden
Ben Woollaston w/o Yan Bingtao
Kurt Maflin vs. Zhou Yuelong
Wang Yuchen vs. David Gilbert
Andrew Higginson/Asutosh Padhy (a) vs. Alexander Ursenbacher
Niu Zhuang vs. Mark Allen
Quarter-Final: Ben Woollaston vs. Mark Allen
Boonyarit Kaettikun vs. Liam Highfield
Robert Milkins vs. Yu Delu
Stephen Maguire vs. Akani Songsermsawad
Dominic Dale vs. Rod Lawler
Gary Wilson vs. Luca Brecel
Ian Preece vs. Michael Holt
Mike Dunn vs. Martin O’Donnell
Zhao Xintong vs. John Higgins
Quarter-Final: Robert Milkins vs. John Higgins
Final: Shaun Murphy vs. Mark Allen
This event will take place from Tuesday 12th September – Saturday 16th September.
