Wild Cards in the World of TV Sport

Nowadays, snooker commands little more than a footnote in the sports news and most of the focus of BBC’s Forty Years At The Crucible was on the period in the 1980s when the green baize was a virtually inescapable presence on TV screens throughout the winter. So unsurprisingly, a good three-quarters of the programme was devoted to that era and to players who had the good fortune to be in the top tier at the time. They rolled out the old jokes about Steve ‘Interesting’ Davis, Dennis Taylor’s outsized glasses and Willie Thorne’s baldness, and there was talk about the 1985 final (the apex of the sport in terms of viewing figures) and Cliff Thorburn’s televised 147 (an extremely rare feat at the time).

In an audience mostly comprised of former and current snookerers, the Chinese players didn’t seem that interested – the camera caught several of them looking at their smartphones while presenter Hazel Irvine tripped down memory lane with one middle-aged ex-pro after another. In a country where Ding Junhui, their most successful player, commands viewing figures in the hundreds of millions, it would be easy to understand why they mightn’t be so interested in nostalgia.

While snooker is a ‘new’ sport in China, and one that is thriving, the sense that in Britain it is clinging to the past was compounded by supremo Barry Hearn’s announcement that veterans Jimmy White and Ken Doherty would be given invitational tour cards to allow them remain in the professional ranks for the forthcoming season.  Speaking on the programme, Hearn said, 'They are multiple ranking winners in their own right but great ambassadors for the sport of snooker'.

You can’t say they (White, in particular) haven’t given a lot to the sport but this move smacks of desperation, a decision based on sentiment and popularity rather than on the players' ability to compete at the highest level. 
Snooker has a history of depending on ‘characters’ to win over the agnostic viewers. In the 1980s, the players, most of whom had spent years as amateurs, were mostly very open in expressing their frustrations with what is a fiendishly complicated game. Grimaces, despondent head shakes and wry smiles were all part of the entertainment.  As in just about every sport, there was less money, less pressure and more fun.   The most successful player by far was the conspicuously professional, and impassive Steve Davis and the players who followed in his wake were by and large, versions of him. The puckish and brilliant Ronnie O’Sullivan, who has a mutual love-hate relationship with the snooker authorities, is the glaring exception, and interest in the world championship drains away after he is eliminated from tournament.   

  Women’s tennis is probably in a similar state. Maria Sharapova, recently returned from a twelve-month ban for neglecting to follow a directive regarding drug supplements, has received wild card entries for three tournaments who feel that they need her to boost their profile. Following the news that the pregnant Serena Williams has pulled out of the tour, it is likely that Sharapova will be offered further wild cards. After all, this is the second or third most recognisable tennis player in the world, the one whose face is on adverts and in magazines that reach far beyond the sport and tennis, like snooker, relies heavily on star quality to draw in spectators and viewers.

But it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for less famous (or unknown) snooker or tennis players who may be bumped out of a tournament in favour of older, established stars who have been saved the bother of going through the qualification process.