Ronnie O'Sullivan and his wife

I've no idea why, but quite a lot of people end up at this blog searching for pictures of snooker player Ronnie O'Sullivan's wife, Jo Langley. So here you go. That's his daughter Lilly too. Not pictured is his son Ronnie Jr.

Snooker: Zhu Ying - Chinese referee at the 2012 World Snooker Championship

Zhu Ying (诸瑛), sometimes known by her chosen English name of Ivy, is a Chinese snooker referee who has been officiating at the current World Snooker Championship.

Born in Shanghai in 1982, Zhu Ying is the first Chinese referee to appear at The Crucible. After lengthy training in China and several months in England she qualified to become one of the WPBSA (World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association) referees and started appearing in televised tournaments.

Zhu Ying is also a big hit with the Chinese fans and a visit to a snooker tournament isn't complete without having their photograph taken with her.

She maintains a page on Weibo, which is the Chinese equivalent of Facebook or Tumbler. It's very candid and you can see just how much enthusiasm she has for the game. She's also enticed fellow referee Michaela Tabb to join the site so that the Chinese fans can get to know here better.
http://www.weibo.com/refivyzhu

In an interview over on The Snooker Blog, she revealed exactly how she got involved in the game:

Back in 1999 when I was still in high school, I was watching my very first snooker match which was one of the Shanghai Masters. I was suddenly into the beautiful green cloth in the TV and watched all the rest of the series. John did a perfect job and won the Champ at last. That was the start of my snooker dream – John was playing the match with the beautiful table. That’s also why people say John Higgins left me a great impression because when I started, he’s the one who happened to be there and playing.

You can read the full interview (which was conducted at the end of last year) here:
http://www.thesnookerblog.com/2012/04/exclusive-ivy-zhu-诸瑛-zhu-ying-interview/

The BBC also put together an interview with her recently and it's interesting to hear her speaking English:








I'll leave you now with some picture of Zhu Ying in action. If you'd like to see some behind-the-scenes stuff, she posts a lot of pictures to her Weibo page so it's well worth a look. She does tend to write in Chinese, but there are some posts in English too. (I happen to have a Chinese translation service sitting beside me, so it's easy for me).

Not to be confused with the character of Zhu Yingtai (祝英台) from the Chinese legend of 'The Butterfly Lovers' - pretty much the Chinese equivalent of Romeo and Juliet.

Nor should she be confused with the actress Zhu Ying (朱瑩).

Snooker: Is Cao Yupeng a cheat or is Mark Allen a racist?

There was a bit of drama in the snooker on Monday. Mark Allen of Northern Ireland was facing Cao Yupeng of China in a first round match of the 2012 World Snooker Championship. Although Allen was seeded 10th and holds a world ranking of 11th, he was thoroughly defeated 10-6 by the unseeded Cao Yupeng whose world ranking has never been higher than 81.

During the match, with Cao leading 5-4, there was an incident that Mark Allen called as a foul, but only after the match was over. Allen alleged that Cao has "pushed" the ball. When playing a stroke, one is required to strike the white ball cleanly such that it immediately loses contact with the cue and no further contact is made. Allen is alleging that Cao didn't strike cleanly (due to the awkward angle) and either that there was prolonged contact between the white ball and the cue tip or that the cue touched the white more than once.




Having watched the replay many times, I don't agree. You can see it above. The white ends up in a group of red balls requiring a difficult hand position and the white definitely bounces about a bit, although whether it makes a second contact or there's some kind of push, I simply can't tell. I can see nothing wrong with the shot, but I'm no expert so I can't categorically say that there is nothing to see.

The commentators at the time were Terry Griffiths and John Virgo - both ex-players.

Griffiths: "I thought he fouled that then. I thought he hit the white twice; did he, John?"
Virgo: "Mmm. Referee Paul Collier was having a good close look.... mmm."

Although Griffiths was quite clear that he thought something had happened, Virgo was non-committal.




At a press conference after the match, Mark Allen was quite clear:

"I thought the big turning point of the match was at 5-4. He was in among the balls and Paul Collier [the referee] missed a blatant push (shot). It was quite obvious to me… anyone at home could probably see that.

"It was a big stage of the match considering I had put him under pressure last night to get back to 5-4. If the referee rightfully calls a foul there, I have a good chance of going 5-5. He [Cao] went on from there to pull away to 7-4."

Now if he'd left it at that, then it would just be a small disagreement over a possible foul. Rather than mention it at a press conference and have it sound like sour grapes, he'd have been best to whine about it to his mates in the bar.

When a player commits a foul that the referee doesn't spot, it's expected that the player will be honest enough to say so. Their opponent is also free to raise the matter with the referee. At the time, neither player said anything.

This kind of thing's all over the Chinese internet... probably

But Mark Allen went on to say:

"It seems to be a bit of trait for the Chinese players. There’s been a few instances in the past…fouls…and blatant cheating going on. It needs to be corrected because he [Cao] is a good enough player. He doesn’t have to do that.

"He did look at the referee as soon as he done it as if to say: you’re not calling a foul here? I looked at Paul and Michaela (Tabb) who was marking the match and Griffiths who was commentating on it. Anything that Terry says, I trust.

"He [Griffiths] pretty much confirmed it at the interval. It is a pretty sad state of snooker if it has to come down to that. Its not the first time. Marco Fu and Liang Wenbo have been known for it in the past. Maybe it is just a Chinese thing."

Ouch. Did he really have to say that not only did Cao cheat, but that Chinese players are known for it and suggested that Marco Fu and Liang Wenbo are cheats too? Oh he certainly did not. There's been some suggestion that his remarks are racist. I'm not sure about that. If one replaces the word "Chinese" with "black", then yeah, it all sounds pretty racist.

Luckily, pretty much every Chinese person I've ever met is much more racist than that so they're hardly likely to call foul. However he's managed to suggest dishonour on the part of all Chinese which is likely to arouse the astonishing levels of nationalism in many Chinese youths. You should read the Chinese internet any time Japan fails to mention the Nanjing Massacre in a history textbook. Boy, do they ever get pissed off and say so.

Last time he had to apologise, Mark Allen thought that sticking tape across his mouth would help his case

Worse still, Mark Allen's got a bit of a history of mouthing off and has even made disparaging remarks about China before. When in Hainan for the China Open earlier this year, Mark Allen sent out a tweet saying the following:

"Dead cat found this morning. Any wonder why this place stinks? Must be dead cats all round the town. This place is horrendous. It just baffles me how world snooker continuously go out of their way to put tournaments on in the middle of nowhere. Journey a nightmare. People are ignorant. Place stinks. Arena’s rubbish, tables poor, food is horrendous. Other than that I love China."

Now, to be fair, most of that is just a statement of fact. Other than a possibly unwise bit about people being ignorant, I can't actually see anything there that's unjust. Outside of cities like Beijing, China can be a bit... well filthy. Heck, even in Beijing it's not a great idea to sit on a public bench without wiping it down thanks to the pollution. But Mark Allen got into trouble for this and ended up being fined as well as having to issue an apology. That seemed a bit harsh, but China influence in snooker is now great enough that snooker's governing body wanted to make sure that it sent the right signals.

Today's outburst is just awful. I don't expect snooker players to necessarily be intellectual giants, but Mark Allen does come off as being a bit of a thicky.

I watched that match. I didn't see either player look to the referees or suggest anything untoward at the time. All I heard was one commentator express his opinion that a foul may have occurred. That Terry Griffiths is Mark Allen's coach is somewhat suspicious. Allen does say that he talked to Griffiths during the interval and "he pretty much confirmed it". And that to me suggests that he was pissed off he was losing, had some doubt about that foul, but had stewed about it after talking to his coach and then said something unfortunate when he talked too much at a press conference.

But there was more to come. Barry Hearne, head of world snooker appeared on TV to condemn and play down Allen's remarks and Allen was sent a letter informing him that disciplinary action would be coming. Chances are he'll get a fine and told to apologise again. There is the potential to ban him for a while, but doing so would probably just exacerbate the problem and encourage people to take sides over what is really quite a minor issue. But China must be satisfied.

If Chinese companies were to withdraw their sponsorship, there would only really be around half the snooker contests there are now. Whilst the governing body has tried really hard to improve the popularity of the game in other countries, they haven't had much success. Even in mainland Europe, snooker is a pretty nice interest. So no one can afford to piss off the Chinese. Over matters of honour and face such as this, Chinese companies are a lot more ready to vote with their feet than their Western equivalents.

There are four Chinese players in the world championship this year. Ten years ago there were none. After Ding appeared, there were a couple of other players and now there are several. And they'll all have heard what Mark Allen said.

He's a delight, isn't he? Obviously I'm picking pictures showing him in a negative light,
but he really makes it easy.

So Allen has now issued an apology before he's forced to:

"Following my recent comments in the press conference after my first-round defeat to Cao Yupeng, I would like to formally apologise to anyone who may have been offended.

"Having taken some time to reflect on my comments I can appreciate that I overstepped the line at a time when I was heavily influenced by the emotions of a disappointing defeat.

"I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to Cao Yupeng if he felt that my comments were insinuating he were a cheat."

It's a shitty apology, but par for the course these days. One of the first articles I wrote for this blog was about non-apologies. That's a link right there. Don't go saying that you would like to apologise and then not actually apologise. Saying you would like to isn't the same as saying you're sorry. Saying " if he felt that my comments were insinuating he were a cheat" isn't the same as saying you're sorry you called someone a cheat - you're saying that you're sorry that they feel that way; it's almost as though you're saying that you're upset because of them.

Again, to be fair, I'm pretty sure Mark Allen didn't write that apology. He didn't even say it. That was a statement released by his management company. Looking through his tweets, I don't think Mark Allen's really capable of writing something like that without help. Hopefully it'll be enough.

But maybe Mark Allen isn't quite so stupid. This is his last post on his Twitter account.

China wins the snooker

Jimmy White really did play the bad guy in a Hong Kong snooker movie versus Stephen Chow (Shaolin Soccer)

It's the World Snooker Championship at the moment. This annual contest is in the first round and will continue for three weeks. I'll be watching a lot of it regardless of whether I want to or not, because China is playing.

My wife's Chinese, from Taiwan. The political situation out there is complicated, but no matter what, she'll always regard herself as Chinese and cheer on the Chinese participants in... well, pretty much anything. And snooker's pretty popular in China these days thanks to Ding Junhui. Ever since DingDing (as he's known in my household) appeared, snooker has been changing.

Being female and attractive are important
qualities in a snooker referee

In 2001, professional snooker was in decline. The banning of tobacco sponsorship had hit snooker especially hard and there were problems with trying to attract new sponsors. One thing the WPBSA (World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association) tried was to bring in a female referee to uh, spice things up (they imagined). Although Michaela Tabb has proved popular with both fans and players and her refereeing has been solid, her rapid elevation caused a lot of ill-feeling with other snooker officials. Not for her the five year apprenticeship required of all other referees and, when the WPBSA needed to sack two of its ten referees to cut costs, she was oddly exempt from the last-in-first-out rule that had always applied. Oh and she attracted neither new fans nor sponsors.

In 2003, Ding Junhui turned professional after winning many under-21 competitions and becoming China's number one player. When DingDing appeared on our televisions, it wasn't obvious just how much snooker was about to change. There had been other Chinese-ish players before - Marco Fu of Hong Kong had been playing professionally for a few years for example - but Ding was the first player from mainland China to break into the professional game. Ding was living in England in order to better practice his game and he was already famous among the other Chinese living in the north of England. As soon as Ding appeared on television, yellow faces appeared in the crowd at his matches. Chinese TV channels began to cover the sport and there was a sudden influx of Chinese sponsorship. The mere arrival of Ding had rescued the game of snooker pretty much overnight.

It's a few years since then and there's isn't a player's waistcoat that doesn't have Chinese characters on it. Many tournaments are sponsored by Chinese companies you've never heard of. The China Open was revived and suddenly the Shanghai Masters competition was created. Every player benefited from new sponsorship, new prize money, new tournaments and a whole new audience. And still the commentators couldn't pronounce Ding's name (丁俊晖 - Dīng Jùnhuī - ding june-whey). But they really had better start practising their Chinese names as Ding's success didn't just create new fans, but a whole new generation of players and even a referee.

Zhu Ying - professional snooker's newest referee

Michaela Tabb might be officiating the finals of the World Championship this year, but Zhu Ying will be refereeing several matches and is younger, prettier and, being Chinese-ier, appeals to a much bigger audience. Oh and no one cheated or bent the rules to get her a job.

There's a whole bunch of Chinese players suddenly appearing in the competitions too. Appearing alongside Ding Junhui in the 2012 World Championship are Cao Yupeng, Liang Wenbo and Liu Chuang. Marco Fu's in it too, but as my wife puts it "No Chinese wants to see his ugly Cantonese face. He's a Hong Kong bastard - he's not real Chinese!"

Liang Wenbo and Ding Junhui - one lives in Romford, the other in Sheffield

And the new crop of Chinese players aren't slouches. On Saturday, Liang Wenbo took number one seed John Higgins down to the last frame before missing a crucial shot. Sunday saw Cao Yupeng beat world number seven, Mark Allen. (Note to commentators: it's pronounced ts-ow you-pung whereas you're calling him "cow" or "sow" which both mean "fuck" in Mandarin). Although Liu Chuang is unlikely to beat Mark Williams on Wednesday, Ding will likely beat Ryan Day leading to a match between him and Cao Yupeng.

As well as those in the World Championship, there are a whole lot of other Chinese players zipping up the rankings. You can expect to see Jin Long, Li Hang, Li Yan, Liu Song, Lu Ning, Mei Xiwen, Tian Pengfei, Xiao Guodong, Yu Delu, Zhang Anda on your TV shortly and it'll be hilarious listening to the commentators stumble over their names.

One of the main differences with the Chinese players is the approach they take to their snooker careers. As well as being a professional snooker player taking part in all the main contests, Ding also has to take part in every major Asian event as he's got to be China's number one guy in as public a manner as possible over there. A further demand on Ding's time is that he's a student at Shanghai Jiao Tong University studying Business Administration and Management. Oh and he now has a chain of snooker clubs across China (although this tends to be the kind of thing you let your family run if you're Chinese, heck it was probably their idea). He's easily the busiest of the pro players and it's interesting to see just how much Ding is concentrating on securing his future after snooker; something that many other players would do well to emulate.

It turns out that many Chinese actually are inscrutable

Ding Junhui is a quiet and gentle man with the extraordinary burden of being a national hero from a country where that means much more than the chance to appear on ballroom dancing shows. Reading his (Chinese language) blog shows Ding going out to play in the English snow with his friends and it's quite touching to see how he shares details of his student life, encouraging his Chinese fans to study as much as they can (Ding will post pictures of things like his enrolment certificates and class schedules so his followers can see exactly what university is like). It's quite astonishing how quietly dignified Ding is. I'd be freaking out if I had the kind of pressures that he does and I definitely wouldn't be able to bear them with such serenity.

My wife fucking loves Ronnie O'Sullivan for the respect he shows to Ding

Ding rarely shows any emotion in any of his matches and, although he is very polite, you don't get much hint of friendship between him and other players. Other non-yellow players that is. Amongst the Chinese players, Ding is god-like. He opened the door to international snooker for China and it's doubtful that any of the new generation of players would be there without him. Liang Wenbo was the next guy to make it up to the top ranks of world snooker and it's clear that he and Ding, both living in England for a few years now, are genuinely friends. But emotion is clearly something to keep private. Occasionally a small smile might be visible when he wins, but there's really only one time that Ding's been seen to emit an actual feeling and that was when a match with Ronnie O'Sullivan went badly wrong and Ding walked off thinking it had finished when it hadn't. I was very impressed that O'Sullivan was the first to go after him and spent time calming him down and cheering him up enough to return to the table. They're clearly stayed fairly close friends since then.

There are snooker soap operas in China now, there's even a cartoon series specifically about Ding (no kidding)

Ding's status as a legend is assured, but what's less certain is the future of snooker. It's already slightly weird that the majority of the money and TV audience comes from China and yet most of the competitions are in England. Luckily most of the players are still English, but with waves of eager young Chinese players on the way, how long is it before they're in the majority? And when that day comes is snooker going to be a game where all the audience, money and players come from China and yet the games continue to be played in England? Well, goodness knows what's going to happen, but I'm going to be watching it (I don't have any choice in the matter).

Proper writers like to do a little trick to round off articles where they make reference back to the opening sentence or the title, even if it means fudging in a semi-pun, telling a lie, saying something slightly pretentious or even merely repeating a word or two. My wife glanced over at the television earlier today after a non-yellow match and asked me "Who won the snooker?" China did, oh wife of mine, China won the snooker...

People think that Confucius is the great philosopher sage of China, but actually it's Jimmy White

"Legend of the Dragon" 1991 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100047/