This article is taken from the June 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Find our subscription offers here.
The centenary World Table Tennis Championships were held at Wembley Arena this month and again Hungary failed to win a medal. This might seem a bizarre remark, like complaining about the latest interpretation of HMS Pinafore by the Pyongyang Light Operatic Society, but there was a time when no one could whiff or whaff like the boys from Budapest. The girls too.
at 19 (credit: Table Tennis England)
Hungary won eight of the first nine men’s world singles titles — the odd one coming in 1929 for a lad from Stockport called Fred Perry who decided he preferred tennis played with bigger balls — and 24 of the first 27 women’s titles. Hungary remains the second most successful ping-pong nation, yet they have not had a title since 1979.
China has long been the world’s table tennis superpower. Mao Zedong called their first world champion, Rong Guotuan, his “spiritual nuclear weapon” in 1959 (Rong killed himself nine years later after being accused of spying), and they have dominated the sport since the 1970s. Could the same be about to happen in snooker?
Wu Yize, a 22-year-old with a fabulous ability for long-range potting, became their second world champion this month, following Zhao Xintong last year. They now have ten of the top 30 players in the rankings. Snooker is played at 300,000 clubs in China, though the best go to a finishing school in Sheffield.
The first Chinese professional tournament was held in Shanghai in 1985. Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor beat two local players who could barely make a break of 30. Twenty years later, Ding Junhui, a teenager who began playing aged nine, was the first Chinese player to win a ranking title. He was briefly world No. 1 in 2014.
Snooker is now international. There are players from Thailand and Iran in the top 30 and the most promising teenager is a 15-year-old Pole. But as I watched this year’s contest at the Crucible, I felt nostalgia for a nation once at the top of the game which has not had anyone qualify for the Worlds this century. Canadian snooker has gone to pot.
Cliff Thorburn, The Grinder, was the best: world champion in 1980 when compatriots Kirk Stevens and Jim Wych reached the quarter-finals. That year’s final was interrupted by the SAS ending the Iranian embassy siege. The snooker was sponsored by a cigarette brand, giving commentator Ted Lowe the immortal segue: “And now, from one Embassy to another.” Different times.
In 1983, Thorburn was the first to make a maximum 147 break at the World Championship, watched by his old pal Bill Werbeniuk, a top eight player. Other leading Canadians included Alain Robidoux, a semi-finalist in 1997, and Bob Chaperon, their last winner of a ranking title in 1990.
There was something gloriously rough and ready about the Canadians, who twice won the team World Cup. Thorburn, with his Tom Selleck moustache, came from an orphanage and worked as a bin man whilst hustling at night on the tables. When Alex Higgins, whose wasteful flamboyance contrasted with his steady play, called him a “Canadian c***” at the Irish Open, Thorburn punched him in the jaw and then, when Higgins offered to shake hands, kicked him in the groin.
Werbeniuk grew up in a billiards hall in Winnipeg, owned by his father whom he called “one of the biggest crooks in Canada”. Big Bill was told by his doctor to drink beer to counter a tremor in his hand.
He used to warm up with six pints, which he claimed to put down as a tax-deductible expense, then have one per frame. After knocking back 28 pints and 16 whiskies during a match with Nigel Bond in 1990, the beaten Werbeniuk said he was off to drown his sorrows. He died at 56.
And then there was Stevens, who spent his teens on the tables of Toronto after his parents divorced, played Thorburn for $2 when he was 12, had a mullet and all-white suits and was keen on cocaine. Twice a world semi-finalist, he got to No 4. But now Canadian snooker has gone the way of Hungarian table tennis. Some years they don’t even have players in the qualifying tournament for the Worlds. Their best, Sahil Nayyar, is ranked No. 125. Across the land, the snooker tables lie empty; the young apparently prefer the speed of pool to a slow game of strategy.
Other sporting empires have crumbled. The modern flagbearer for tennis in Sweden — the land of Borg, Edberg and Wilander — is Elias Ymer, the 30-year-old son of Ethiopian immigrants. At 176 he is the only Swedish man ranked in the top 400. There were no Brazilians in Formula One in 2018 for the first time in 50 years. The sport of Senna, Piquet, Fittipaldi, Barrichello and Massa has gone off track.
It is now represented on the grid by Gabriel Bortoleto, the nineteenth best driver last year. Where are those flying Finns in long-distance running, heirs to Paavo Nurmi, Hannes Kolehmainen, Ville Ritola and Lasse Virén, who between them won 22 Olympic gold medals? Rugby fans in Wales and cricket-loving West Indians may fear the same.
Nations fall without investment and leadership, in sport as in politics. China may become snooker’s superpower, but it is hard not to feel the sport was more exciting when it had those Canadians. O my Thorburn and my Werbeniuk long ago!
