And so it begins… the first session of this year “Seniors Crucible” was played this afternoon. We are only at the last 16 stage but every match is important of course. These are short matches – best of 5 – and there is a 30 seconds shot clock. 30 seconds is plenty of time and shouldn’t be a problem for anyone. The idea is to prevent players to get bogged down.

Before the start of the event, I took a walk around the venue. Outside and inside…

The first match of the day saw James Wattana beat Rodney Goggins by 3-2. At 54 James Wattana can still play to a very good standard!

Here are the images of that match:

In the second match of the afternoon Ken Doherty faced Tyson Crinis from Australia. Ken beat him by 3-1. The scores are on snookerscores.net and, as you can see the match was actually a really close affair. All credits to Tyson there because this certainly was a totally unfamiliar environment and the time difference was bound to take its toll on him too. Before the match started, Neil Robertson sent a video message in support of his compatriot which was quite nice to see. I do hope that Tyson enjoyed the experience, he certainly didn’t disgrace himself!

Here are the images of that match: