By Elliott West
“Everyone played to win but not like they would in the world championship. The important thing was to put on a good show”.
Barry Hearn
Introduction
Back in the 1980s, China was considered to be a country that was an enemy of the west. A land which few had visited and was largely unknown. Barry Hearn has always been an entrepreneur and someone who is hungry for new projects. So in 1987, he decided to investigate the prospect of holding a tournament in Peking with a long term vision of having a snooker tour in this far flung continent.
Faced with a logistical headache, many thought the Kent Cup wouldn’t be successful as they feared the Chinese wouldn’t travel to the event and the audience would only be made up of the few that could travel from a bicycle ride away to the Peking venue. However like is often the case, Barry Hearn proved the doubters wrong.
The Tournament
In a event that could be classed as a slow burner, this was a snooker spectacle that just grew and grew. One the first day, a smattering of people took their seats in the arena, approximately 500 in total but by the fourth and final day, this had risen to 1,200. The popularity barometer was also born out in the television coverage schedule. Originally pencilled in for five hours, this was soon to be increased to ten. Reaction was so positive that the China Sports Federation agreed to hold the event the next year with the Chinese population warming to snooker as they did to table tennis.
Unlike UK tournaments of the time, the non-ranking, Kent Cup carried an amount of prize money, £100,000. An attractive incentive for the mix of main tour and Chinese players. Like the prize money, snooker was appealing to the new generation in China, a breath of fresh air to a people that the game snatched away from them during the Cultural Revolution and was banned. In a nutshell, it was aptly described by an official, saying:
“It gives the old something to talk to the young about”.
Snooker official
In 1987 there were only 500 snooker tables in the whole of China (estimated), including two in the players’ hotel, the Holiday Inn, Peking. Perhaps this was reflected in the performance of the eight Chinese players competing in the tournament, who looked overwhelmed by the affair, all losing in the best of three matches. The highlight of their performance was when Zhang Yan Bin won a frame in his match against Jimmy White.
Willie Thorne made a 105 break on the first day of the tournament. He followed it with runs of 107 in beating Terry Griffiths 4-1. He also scored a 107 break in his 4-3 victory over Steve Davis and 126 with his last visit of the event.
Davis, having trailed 1-3, levelled his semi-final with a total clearance of 134 before Thorne took the decider with a break of 75.
In the final, Willie Thorne was drawn against Jimmy White. Watched by a television audience of more than 100 million, the spectators saw Willie Thorne round off his 5-2 victory with a break of 126. A feat achieved in an indoor sports stadium with a 5,800 seating capacity.
Results
Quarter-Finals
Willie Thorne v Terry Griffiths 4-1
Steve Davis v Rex Williams 4-0
Jimmy White v Tony Meo 4-0
Neal Foulds v Dennis Taylor 4-1
Semi-Finals
Thorne v Davis 4-3
White v Foulds 4-3
Final
Thorne v White 5-2
Summary
The 1987 Kent Cup was a highly risky project by Barry Hearn’s Matchroom stable in China. However it paid off and was one of the first tournaments on a long and successful path of events that have graced the Chinese stage. Now a stable diet in the snooker calendar, China was then an undiscovered land that promised much but no one knew what. Pioneers such as Dennis Taylor, Willie Thorne and Jimmy White, soon became household names amongst snooker fans in China but this was only because of Hearn’s daring project. A tournament that led to today’s China Open and Shanghai Masters.
