Time for snooker!
October 20, 2001 ~ 11:30 p.m.
Let's rewind my life back to the winter of late '98/early '99. I had just arrived in England to live for the first time and was dreadfully homesick. I was also bored as hell�no job, no PlayStation and no computer. I felt miserable and had no escapes of any kind�and believe me, an escape is exactly what I needed.
Then one fine evening, I found it. I turned on the television and came across coverage of two men playing a strange form of billiards. The game was being televised from an auditorium and the studio audience was rather large. My first instinct was to laugh and mutter, "now who the hell would watch this?" A couple of minutes later, I turned back to the channel and decided to watch some of the game, just for another laugh. One hour later, I was still watching it, enraptured.
Snooker is a form of billiards, but instead of using numbered balls, as with American pool, they use a series of colored balls. The contestants have to knock the balls in a certain order�reds first, then a shot at the pink or black, then a chance at the blue, etc. Every color is worth a number of points: Red=1, Green=4, Blue=5, etc. I admit, I still don't know the technicalities behind the game all that well. All I know is this: I love snooker.
During that fateful winter, I became addicted to watching it on TV, and I have eagerly followed it ever since. Why I enjoy watching this form of pool so much I can't say. But clearly, I am not the only one. Snooker has a dedicated following in Britain, and clearly they would not televise matches if there was no demand for it. Excellent ratings on BBC1 and BBC2 during snooker championships clearly demonstrate this demand.
I even have a favorite snooker player who I always root for: Ronnie O'Sullivan. He won the snooker World Championship this past spring, but just a few nights ago, he got eliminated in the semi-finals for the LG Cup. Peter Ebdon will now square off against Stephen Lee in the LG Cup Final tomorrow evening, and it will be a tasty match, a must-see.
Here's why: During last spring's quarter finals for the World Championship, Ebdon and Lee faced off. They matched each other, frame for frame, and even the experts couldn't predict a winner. When he finally edged Lee to win the match, Edbon erupted with a shocking outpouring of emotion. Brandishing his cue, he stormed around the table, screaming and hollering. He apologized later and said he hoped Lee wouldn't take it personally. Ebdon would go on to lose the next round, but watching coverage of his outburst sealed it for me: "Snooker is cool," I thought.
I am a snooker fan. And I will be watching the Ebdon-Lee match tomorrow night with rapt attention. May the best man win!
� M.E.M.
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Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.
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