Ding or Not to Ding?

[Pollita]

Now I know the Chinese will be the biggest ecomony in the world in 10 years time, overtaking America. I know that Snooker is a very popular pastime in China. There are like 10 Billion people in China, I forsee that there will be many more like Ding within the next 5 years.

Do you think the Chinese will dominate this sport much like the other sports such as, Badminton, Table Tennis/ Gymnastics?

[Sonny]

There will always be players from the UK doing well because it's so popular over here. I don't forsee a top 16 consisting of 16 Chinese players in my lifetime. I think Ding will be the standout player from China until the next decade.

*edit - and I don't think there are 10 billion Chinese! Try 1 billion

[Pollita]

10 Billion/1 Billion its the same. Its a lot of people ^^

Will Ding be Embassay World Snooker Champion?

[Sonny]

there will never be another Embassy World Champion but he will almost definitely win at the Crucible I think

[chrisfinch]

someone put a lot of money on a chinese player to win the worlds before 2010. he stands to win a lot of money and i hope for the development of the sport worldwide an asian player wins, preferably ding

[Pollita]

I would say Ding has better chances than Fu in winning the world championships. Ding has youth on his side.

[Sonny]

I would say Fu has next to no chance of ever winning it

[Pollita]

Well I would agree but then It does take 5-6 year after turning pro before you see any results. never say Never I guess :rolleyes:

[chrisfinch]

I would say Fu has next to no chance of ever winning it


highly unlikey, wattana had the best chance, but he missed the boat.

hopefully the same doesn't happen to ding

[Sonny]

I guess I see things differently having been following snooker for 25 years now and have seen patterns younger folk haven't.

Wattana had too much pressure on him from his native Thailand and he didn't like living in England - a timid character he was also in the era of Hendry domination and therefore stood little chance of winning at the Crucible because at his best he wasn't as good as Hendry, and he wasn't 100% settled in his surroundings.

Fu isn't good enough to win it in my opinion. You have to have something special to win at Sheffield and he hasn't got, nor did he ever have it. He is a very solid player, but not a 'great' player.

Ding is as good as Fu and Wattana put together. I will bet my life on him winning at the Crucible in the next 5 years, maybe even the next 2. Wattana and Fu were no where near the player Ding is when they were his age.

[chrisfinch]

2 years is unlikely, but there is a great chance in the next 5 years

[Sonny]

I think he's good enough to win it next year :)

[chrisfinch]

I think he's good enough to win it next year :)

that's confidence. i hope your right.

[Marge]

Considering how young Ding is and how he beat Stephen Hendry, I think he stands a good chance! :)

[ChelseaFC]

The Chinese could dominate anything they wanted to if they had the inclination, just see the results at the Beijing olympics in 2008 i have a feeling they're going to send quite a message to the rest of the world.

Ding has the ability to be world champion, and you can be sure he's going to get a lot of support from the Chinese government to develop, so ability, support, temperment, as long as he maintains his drive i can see it happening within 5-7 years.

I can't see a domination of snooker by Chinese players at any time, but you can be sure we'll see a few more Ding's coming through.

[chrisfinch]

Habib Subah is one the tour for next season, i think he's from thailand and he beat jimmy michie in round one of the china open

[JanieWatkins]

Habib Subah is one the tour for next season, i think he's from thailand and he beat jimmy michie in round one of the china open
Habib Subah is from Bahrain

As well as Ding, watch out for Tian Pengfei, Liang Wenbo and Xiao Guodong.
Also Moh Keen Ho from Malaysia.

[TIMO147]

there is many new young players coming through now that it is unlikely we wil see another multi winner such as davis hendry reardon etc even ronnie one of the greatest natural players ever to hold a cue. but ronnie has no respect for the "gentlemans game" or fellow players shame his head not right for it! who knows maybe an unknown?

[staryang]

Hi,

I am a chinese. In china, most ppl in north play 8-balls and most ppl in south play snooker. I think in next 5-10 years, there probly will be some good players like Ding. But UK will still be the best in this game. I played in both china and Uk snooker clubs, and the level of average in UK is a lot higher than china.

[oliviafuwei]

hi to my compatriate;)

glad to see so much compliment to my fav snooker player

Youth is Ding's asset but as time passes Ding will lose such advantage but i still put my faith in him to become world champion

influenced by Ding's success, many youngsters in China begin to play snooker. No doubt more Chinese will participate in the world snooker but dominate? well, i guess not...at least Mark Sleby will defend the European glory...hahaha

[hegeland]

How things stand today, according to moi:

If things continue in the direction they have for the last 5-10 years, we'll see at least 2-4 chinese players in the top 16 within 10-20 years. And that's a pretty remarkable development.

But that scenario depends on the future success of Ding and a few other players currently on or nearly on the Main Tour. If they would start to decline instead of rising in the ranks, you can be quite sure CCTV won't show as much snooker as they have done lately. WSA are trying to prevent this from happening by holding two ranking tournaments each year in China. If snooker wouldn't be shown on CCTV you can be quite sure the interest of snooker in China will start to fade.

As I see it there are three main factors that determines the future of snooker in China (or any country really)

1. TV coverage.
2. Domestic players doing well.
3. Prize money.

If WSA can sort at least two out of these three things right, there is no doubt in my book that snooker has a bright future in that region.

[DartsMadJohn]

Snooker will continue to grow in China as long as new young players are coming up the rankings, because I can't see Ding being the lone star for 5-10 years - I think the pressure will end up being too much and he'll start to decline.

Everybody talks about China being the new hotbed, but at the moment who do they really have besides Ding? Liang has only just survived on the tour for the last few seasons, Tian has only just kept his place, Liu Song I think only qualified for one event this season, and Jin Long fell off the tour a few years back and hasn't returned. Xiao Guodong looks promising, but I think that a second Chinese player needs to establish himself on the Tour, because Ding mania won't last forever.

Edited for typos

[Alex0paul]

Yu DeLu is also a promising talent. I think he is still in his mid teens and won his wild card round match in this years and last years China Open. Also last year he took defending champion Ding Junhui to the wire losing 5-4. Hopefully he can qualify onto the main tour soon. I think the main problem is that there isn't enough openings for Asian players to get onto the main tour. Personally I think Asia should have its own seperate amataur tour where the top 4,5, or 6 players win a ticket to the main tour.

[DartsMadJohn]

It would be great if the Main Tour awarded places to more countries, but IMHO you would need to expand the tour to 128 players for that to happen, and given the prize money situation on the current 96-man tour, it just isn't feasible at the moment.

If the tour ever reverted back to 128 players, do you think the cut-off point for keeping your place should remain the top 64, or would you expand it down to 72 or maybe even 96?

Also, where would the extra players come from? The Asian champion, runner up and U21 champion all get places - maybe give places to the Thai, Chinese and Indian national champions? You could put Pakistan in that list, but I don't know if they have anyone playing to a decent standard besides Shokat Ali. Maybe expand the number of main tour spots available to Oceania, and give North America a place?

Another option would be to replace the PIOS with a different amateur tour - if there is enough money and/or sponsorship you could run one for Europe and one for Asia, and have them operate as a kind of second division below the Main Tour, but where (unlike the PIOS) players could actually make some kind of living - I put a post in the Amateur Snooker section that goes on (well, really it rants on) about this kind of idea.

I wouldn't want to expand the PIOS qualfiying to 12-16 Tour places, or give any more places to the UK national tours, because that would just make the sport even more heavily based around the UK than it is now, and let's be honest, the playes who have qualified through the national rankings like Leadbetter, McGlinchey, Stephen etc. haven't exactly set the world alight, have they?