Snooker Before a Changing of the Guard: The Power Map After the Class of '75

On a match night at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, I sat close enough to hear the chalk touch Ronnie O'Sullivan's fingers. At 50, his cue action had barely changed across two decades: relaxed shoulders, no tension in the wrist, left eye level with the ball. But it was not that shot that held my gaze. It was the man opposite him — a young cueist, unshaken, not bowing his head as he stepped to the table. After the first safety exchange, he did not surrender the initiative. Thirty years ago, when I commentated on the finals of the Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry era for VTC, I believed a truly elite cueist could only be born in England, Scotland, Ireland or Wales. That belief is being broken in the quietest possible way, and I do not think the reason is that someone is simply younger. CONTEXT: THE SKELETON OF A SYSTEM To read the shift correctly, you have to look at the structure of professional snooker. At the top sits the title-contending group, roughly 16 players in the world's elite, where Triple Crown titles — the World Championship, UK Championship and Masters — keep changing hands. The middle tier is the backbone ranked 32 to 64, who survive by qualifying, collecting ranking points and per-round prize money. At the bottom are those at risk of losing their Tour Card, the professional playing credential administered by the WPBSA and World Snooker Tour. The season runs nearly ten months with more than twenty ranking events, most staged in England, with a handful in China, continental Europe and the Middle East. This dense calendar shapes every cueist's career, not raw talent alone. The name Class of '75 was coined for three cueists all born in 2026: Ronnie O'Sullivan, John Higgins and Mark Williams. The trio dominated snooker for more than two decades. O'Sullivan holds seven world titles, Higgins four, Williams three. As of early 2026, O'Sullivan still holds the record for career century breaks, past the 1,300 mark, and his collection of 147 maximums ranks among the highest in history. What matters is that these numbers are not merely achievements. They are a measure of something hard to coach: the ability to reproduce a shot under pressure across thousands of competitive hours. The thicker the database, the more the story must be told by human ears, not machine eyes. A stats table tells you who made the most centuries; it does not tell you why that cueist held firm in the decisive frame when his opponent had already changed his cue. CORE ANALYSIS: FORMAT DECIDES FATE, NOT AGE If you follow the regular season closely, you will notice a paradox. In short-format events — best of 7 or best of 9, over within hours — young cueists win more often. In long-format events, especially the World Championship at the Crucible with its multi-session matches and a final that can stretch to best of 35, experience speaks. Why? Because short formats erase the advantage of the player who knows how to manage the rhythm of a match. Over seven frames, one inspired break is enough to flip the scoreline. The room for upsets is huge, and that is the territory of young cueists willing to gamble. In long formats, by contrast, each session is a battle of stamina and psychology, where the player who chooses when to attack, and knows when to push a safety, wins. I call it the gap between speed and depth. Seen through a billiards lens, a good safety is no different from a football pressing sequence: it scores nothing directly, but it pins the opponent into a narrow corner, forces a bad shot, and turns their error into your chance. In long formats, that accumulated chain of safeties only pays off over time. The tracking data I have watched across recent seasons shows a clear trend: young cueists climb the rankings fast on short-format results, but their win rate at the Crucible remains markedly below that of the veterans. In other words, they learn to play fast before they learn to endure long. It is worth distinguishing three different billiards codes, because naming determines how you read a match. Snooker uses a large table, small pockets and 22 balls, demanding extreme precision and the ability to build long scoring sequences. Chinese 8-ball uses a smaller table with more forgiving pockets, rewarding speed and stroke power. American pool 9-ball leans on cue-ball control after the break. All three share the word break, yet the meanings differ entirely. A strong Chinese 8-ball player does not automatically become an elite snooker cueist, and the reverse is equally true. This is also where the Chinese story enters. Since Ding Junhui won his first major titles, the number of billiards academies in China has grown exponentially, especially in Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen. A new generation of cueists has grown up with professional coaches, facilities, a domestic tour and prize money. This is the first time world snooker has a development hub outside the United Kingdom at comparable scale. The industry value chain is shifting accordingly. Upstream sits the ecosystem of clubs, tables and accessories — where China manufactures at low cost and consumes heavily at home. Midstream are the players, events and broadcast. Downstream are sponsorship, digital content and the collectibles market. As UK broadcast rights revenue plateaus, organisers are forced to look east, where younger audiences remain curious about the sport. CONTRARIAN ANGLE: THE ISSUE IS NOT AGE BUT TOUR ECONOMICS The familiar media framing is old versus young. I think that framing is lazy. What is actually changing is the economic structure of the tour. A Tour Card does not guarantee income. Players ranked 40 to 64 often cover their own travel, hotels and coaching. If they fail to go deep in a few events during the season, they lose money. This turns the decision of which events to enter into a financial calculation, not just a sporting one. Established veterans pick their events to protect their stamina. Young players must chase every event to accumulate points — and that very chasing exhausts them late in the season, right when the Crucible arrives. There is another variable rarely mentioned: match-fixing cases. From 2026 to 2026, snooker was shaken when a group of young cueists, mostly from China, received long bans after a WPBSA investigation. To me, this signals a generation placed under excessive financial pressure before they had any career protection. A 20-year-old who cannot make a living from prize money is fertile ground for approaches off the table. Before you pick a side, read what people call them. Nicknames are not just labels for the crowd. The Rocket, The Wizard of Wishaw, The Welsh Potting Machine describe exactly how a cueist plays, and sometimes more accurately than the ranking list. The problem is that when a new billiards nation rises, it takes time to produce such nicknames. A cueist's cultural maturity cannot be measured in title counts. And that is where I resist the conclusion that China will replace England. Widening the talent pool is not the same as shifting power. England still holds the ecosystem around the Crucible, the club network, the referee corps and the broadcast channels. China holds most of the viewing demand and a large share of young talent. These are two different kinds of power, and lumping them into one changing-of-the-guard story is wrong. There is one more point rarely discussed: long formats test not only the cueist but the audience. Slow rhythm, few spectacular shots, hard to sell to a short-form advertising market. So organisers have an incentive to create more short events — where young cueists shine. In other words, the ascent of the new generation is partly designed by format changes serving media demand, not solely by talent. CLOSING: WHAT REMAINS AFTER THE LIGHTS A major event does not end when the whistle sounds; it begins when the lights go out. After every Crucible final, the cueists leave the table, the scoreboard goes dark, and what remains are people who must explain to themselves why they won or lost. That is the truest part of snooker: the part with no camera. I do not believe a sudden changing of the guard is about to erupt. I believe in a slow shift, where three kinds of power — long-format experience, short-format youth, and the market's financial resources — keep negotiating with each other season after season. Whoever learns to stand at the intersection of those three will shape the coming decade, whatever their nationality. The question I leave for the running season: if the playing format is what decides who becomes champion, are we rewarding the best player, or the one who best fits the commercial current?