The Crucible's Greatest Matches by Hector Nunns

Author:Hector Nunns
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Peter Ebdon v Stephen Hendry, 2002, final

“As an animal, Stephen would have been the baddest, meanest Great White Shark ever because he was ferocious – a killing machine on the table, showing no emotion”

STEPHEN Hendry may have thought he had done the hard work coming through one grudge clash in the semi-finals of the 2002 World Championship – as it turned out, the victory over Ronnie O’Sullivan to reach a ninth Crucible final merely landed him in another against Peter Ebdon.

The Scot remained the ‘King of the Crucible’ following his seven world title triumphs achieved in the 1990s but the ‘Hendry the Eighth’ headlines were still on hold, with Mark Williams and Ronnie O’Sullivan having joined the roster of winners in 2000 and 2001.

However, this year in Sheffield Hendry looked to have given himself an excellent chance of extending his own record haul after emerging intact from an encounter with the Rocket that was dripping with bad blood. O’Sullivan had said in the build-up, among other things, that he looked forward to “sending Hendry back up to his sad little life in Scotland”, remarks he was to have rammed back down his throat as the Scot chalked up a third Crucible win over his rival.

Such had been the attention on the clash with defending champion O’Sullivan that it felt like a final, and Hendry by his own admission was not immune to those sentiments. But of course, it was not the final.

Waiting for Hendry in the showpiece was the 31-year-old Ebdon, whom he had beaten with a degree of comfort in the 1996 final to claim world title number six.

But after the intense strain placed both on his emotions and playing resources before and during the O’Sullivan match, Ebdon was probably the last person Hendry needed to be facing – even if that was not how he actually felt heading in to the encounter.

Ebdon was, and remains, something of a snooker one-off. His reputation for off-the-scale intensity and slow play was well deserved, but to dismiss him as simply a tortoise of the baize would be grossly unfair.

The Londoner, who moved to Northamptonshire early in his life, could play all the attacking shots as well as anyone – it just often took him longer to play them. Allied to a superior tactical nous and snooker brain, and fierce will to win, it made him a formidable opponent. He could play all right, and by 2002 had already won four ranking titles.

In the conservative world of snooker Ebdon sported a ponytail for his World Championship debut in 1992, and as his career progressed gave vent to his emotions in the arena around the table in a way that left some his fellow professionals wondering whether these were indeed spontaneous outbursts, or intended to put them off.

Ebdon was also a cerebral individual with academic inclinations and with a musical background that saw him playing the oboe as a youngster, and in 1996 singing on a released single – a cover version of the David Cassidy song ‘I Am A Clown’.

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