By Elliott West
“To beat Ronnie in any tournament is a great scoreline, to beat him in the way I did, I am very, very pleased. It was more or less faultless,” Selby said on ITV4. “It is a huge game and if you can’t get up for matches like that, you might as well put your cue away”.
Mark Selby
Introduction
Every so often in snooker the audience is treated to a classic showdown of snooker minds. A matchup between Mark Selby and Ronnie O’Sullivan in their quarter-final clash at the Player’s Championship in Telford. It’s no trade secret that there is no love lost between these two players with only respect thinly covering their business relationship. Selby is probably slightly higher up O’Sullivan’s potential Christmas card list than Ali Carter but their fistpunp handshake is far from cordial. If you were a bookmaker before this match, you would probably be rubbing your hands, knowing that Mark has a pretty average season, losing to a number of lower-ranked players, making too many schoolboy errors and being poor on his long potting. An understandable purple patch mainly due to his ongoing struggle with his mental health and supporting his wife Vikki who has been going through breast cancer treatment.
Fear
Ronnie is rattled whenever he plays Mark and often goes into irrational mode. So it is often billed as a grudge match. However, if you have met Mark Selby, you will know he is a very friendly person who likes to laugh and always stays behind at the end of exhibitions to engage with the audience and have a couple of beers. Just ask his best friend Barry Hawkins if you don’t believe me. Yet in a snooker environment, friendships are put on ice for the duration of the match. Not that there was one in the first place in this case.
Mark is the one player that gets under Ronnie’s skin. Their games are chalk and cheese with Ronnie adamant that he wants to kill off a frame with one break and Mark happy to play for snookers and grind out a match in the early hours of the morning. Yet although Selby has had a fair share of wins against O’Sullivan, there have also been some bruising defeats at the hands of this snooker genius. Yet just put yourself in Mark’s shoes, you never know which Ronnie is going to turn up. O’Sullivan can often blindside opponents by playing impeccable snooker before their meeting and then pressing the self-destruct button that comes with anxiety or stage fright. The man he calls the “gravedigger” gets his spade well dug in and if Selby goes into vintage mode, Ronnie becomes reckless, scattering the reds and leaving an easy opening for his opponent. Mistakes that Mark is hungry to capitalise on and punish.
Whitewash
If I had posted that the result of this match would be 6-0 prior to play, I don’t think many people would have rushed to their betting app and I would have been ridiculed. This was a match that would turn out to have a dream outcome for one player and a defeat that would hurt but just be one that lingers for a few days. Maybe Ronnie was thinking of richer pickings in Riyadh in a couple of weeks and was already dreaming of potting the golden ball. The untouchable player of the season suddenly became touchable. A player who has already won four titles this season including the UK Championship and the Masters looked very average in this display. Contrary to his previous matches. Up until this point, Ronnie had an envious record of 16 matches unbeaten but the paint would very quickly chip off this statistic in this match.
Flowing
This was a masterclass in snooker despite Desislava Bozhilova’s mistake of not warning Ronnie that he could see a red on his second attempt and would forfeit the opening frame if he missed. Ronnie’s response was to smash into the reds and allow Selby to eventually win the frame with a break of 65. This was the bad omen that would go on to haunt the match. Selby piled on the breaks with 91 in the second and 81 in the third. This was topped with a break of 105 before the mid-session interval.
The only ripple of a comeback from Ronnie came after the interval. This wasn’t before Selby took the fifth frame with a break of 59. O’Sullivan finally kicked into gear in the sixth but a break of 58 was ended with a safety shot that left an opening for his opponent. A frame where the pendulum would again sway in Selby’s favour 70-58. A scoreline that put the cherry on the cake and gave Mark the joy of a 6-0 whitewash over his rival. Selby will now play either Zhang Anda or John Higgins in the semi-finals on Saturday.
