Ronnie O’Sullivan has been on pundit duty for TNT’s coverage of the World Championship; it’s one of televised snooker’s quirky charms that they have the sport’s active heavy-hitters doing telly in the very event they are trying to win. By the same token, the BBC again makes good use of Shaun Murphy, who is an excellent analyst with the gift of the gab and looks to have a job for life as the Dennis Taylor/John Parrott era favourites gradually age out. Although it should be said that these old boys of the baize do not go gentle into that good night, or at least not until someone upstairs is prepared to give them a very firm poke in the baulk region with the spider rest. John Virgo, 79, was on parade for the Beeb’s opening match, and straight into the action with a catchphrase: “Whatever you do, don’t hit the blue.” It could have been any late April morning on BBC Two over the last three decades.
The BBC coverage retains many of its joys and some of its frustrations. Viewers who were enjoying Virgo on BBC Two on Saturday for the tournament opener between Kyren Wilson and Lei Peifan were rudely jolted out of the action because the broadcast ended so we could have a repeat of the cookery show Nadiya Bakes. A pie fan herself, the woman who obliterated the field in the 2015 renewal of The Great British Bake Off showed off her chicken and pink peppercorn pithivier – which has a whole brie in it. This all has its place of course but not while the bloody snooker is on, Nadiya, for goodness sake.
If you don’t want your snooker interrupted by peppercorn pithiviers, however, there is an alternative: TNT Sports has continued its bid for sporting domination in the UK by now televising the Worlds, picking up from where its sister/subsidiary station Eurosport left off. TNT has got every Crucible match, either on one of its four broadcast channels or on the Discovery Plus online streaming service and app, which this column at least has found to be reliable, stable and attractively presented. TNT has inherited from Eurosport the punditry services of Mr O’Sullivan as well as the incomparable Jimmy White, ably supported by that solid citizen Alan McManus.
Ronnie O’Sullivan thinks the standard of snooker is on the rise 📈
Can Neil Robertson keep up with the pace?#WorldChampionshippic.twitter.com/smBkjPAizl
— TNT Sports (@tntsports) April 20, 2025
This writer once spent an evening in a snooker hall in King’s Cross with O’Sullivan and White for some joint interview caper or other, and very enjoyable it was too. White, as we bade farewell, pulled me aside with a hushed offer of an intense-sounding side quest teased with the following cryptic clue: “a mate of ours is in prison because the government’s put the bad arm on him” (no, not sure) “so we need someone from a proper paper to write something”. This, an echo of Jimmy’s exquisitely frustrating World Championship torments, came to nothing I’m sorry to report, the project dissipating tantalisingly into the ether, perhaps too precious to survive contact with mere leaden reality. Although what an endorsement for His Majesty’s Daily Telegraph; I’m amazed the bigwigs here don’t put it on the masthead. You wouldn’t go so far as to say that Jimmy’s looking tip-top on TNT but what a unique and unforgettable contribution he has made to our sporting life. It’s great to still have him around on the TV, basically.
Ronnie is a mixed bag on screen. He sat down for the opener with a big yawn, and seemed unwilling or unable to call to mind the name of Wilson’s nemesis Lei, allowing himself a series of cagey shots to nothing with “the other guy”, “the guy” and “this boy”. But then he crackled into life with some acute and interesting observations about how he’d misjudged the, er, guy, saying: “I must admit, when he first came on the scene I played him a couple of times and I thought ‘ah this geezer can’t play.” Ronnie has reappraised his opinion, he added.
Alarmingly ageless host Radzi Chinyanganya (now 38! Proper picture-in-the-attic job…) got some decent stuff from him about Wilson, who “has played too many tournaments that he didn’t need to play in, you need to chill out and put your cue down. You want to play your way into form here, not be at your limit.” He knows of what he speaks. At turns intensely watchable and at others radiating something like contempt for the whole enterprise, Ronnie the pundit is a seamless continuation from Ronnie the player. And long may he run.
Ronnie O’Sullivan has been on pundit duty for TNT’s coverage of the World Championship; it’s one of televised snooker’s quirky charms that they have the sport’s active heavy-hitters doing telly in the very event they are trying to win. By the same token, the BBC again makes good use of Shaun Murphy, who is an excellent analyst with the gift of the gab and looks to have a job for life as the Dennis Taylor/John Parrott era favourites gradually age out. Although it should be said that these old boys of the baize do not go gentle into that good night, or at least not until someone upstairs is prepared to give them a very firm poke in the baulk region with the spider rest. John Virgo, 79, was on parade for the Beeb’s opening match, and straight into the action with a catchphrase: “Whatever you do, don’t hit the blue.” It could have been any late April morning on BBC Two over the last three decades.
The BBC coverage retains many of its joys and some of its frustrations. Viewers who were enjoying Virgo on BBC Two on Saturday for the tournament opener between Kyren Wilson and Lei Peifan were rudely jolted out of the action because the broadcast ended so we could have a repeat of the cookery show Nadiya Bakes. A pie fan herself, the woman who obliterated the field in the 2015 renewal of The Great British Bake Off showed off her chicken and pink peppercorn pithivier – which has a whole brie in it. This all has its place of course but not while the bloody snooker is on, Nadiya, for goodness sake.
If you don’t want your snooker interrupted by peppercorn pithiviers, however, there is an alternative: TNT Sports has continued its bid for sporting domination in the UK by now televising the Worlds, picking up from where its sister/subsidiary station Eurosport left off. TNT has got every Crucible match, either on one of its four broadcast channels or on the Discovery Plus online streaming service and app, which this column at least has found to be reliable, stable and attractively presented. TNT has inherited from Eurosport the punditry services of Mr O’Sullivan as well as the incomparable Jimmy White, ably supported by that solid citizen Alan McManus.
Ronnie O’Sullivan thinks the standard of snooker is on the rise 📈
Can Neil Robertson keep up with the pace?#WorldChampionshippic.twitter.com/smBkjPAizl
— TNT Sports (@tntsports) April 20, 2025
This writer once spent an evening in a snooker hall in King’s Cross with O’Sullivan and White for some joint interview caper or other, and very enjoyable it was too. White, as we bade farewell, pulled me aside with a hushed offer of an intense-sounding side quest teased with the following cryptic clue: “a mate of ours is in prison because the government’s put the bad arm on him” (no, not sure) “so we need someone from a proper paper to write something”. This, an echo of Jimmy’s exquisitely frustrating World Championship torments, came to nothing I’m sorry to report, the project dissipating tantalisingly into the ether, perhaps too precious to survive contact with mere leaden reality. Although what an endorsement for His Majesty’s Daily Telegraph; I’m amazed the bigwigs here don’t put it on the masthead. You wouldn’t go so far as to say that Jimmy’s looking tip-top on TNT but what a unique and unforgettable contribution he has made to our sporting life. It’s great to still have him around on the TV, basically.
Ronnie is a mixed bag on screen. He sat down for the opener with a big yawn, and seemed unwilling or unable to call to mind the name of Wilson’s nemesis Lei, allowing himself a series of cagey shots to nothing with “the other guy”, “the guy” and “this boy”. But then he crackled into life with some acute and interesting observations about how he’d misjudged the, er, guy, saying: “I must admit, when he first came on the scene I played him a couple of times and I thought ‘ah this geezer can’t play.” Ronnie has reappraised his opinion, he added.
Alarmingly ageless host Radzi Chinyanganya (now 38! Proper picture-in-the-attic job…) got some decent stuff from him about Wilson, who “has played too many tournaments that he didn’t need to play in, you need to chill out and put your cue down. You want to play your way into form here, not be at your limit.” He knows of what he speaks. At turns intensely watchable and at others radiating something like contempt for the whole enterprise, Ronnie the pundit is a seamless continuation from Ronnie the player. And long may he run.
