They talk about prodigies in sport.
Exhibit A: Lionel Messi putting kids on a string while still a child himself.
Under Champions League lights, the world renowned defender Jerome Boateng had all the agility of a falling totem pole, his unshakable stability undone as if by magic.
Out of the hat rises a little Argentinian, hacked at a thousand times over and still standing. Still dancing and weaving and tantalising all these years on.
It wasn’t the confirmation we needed of his legendary status - that had come long before - but it was confirmation we all wanted and craved.
A fully-fledged German international lies like a log and he lies like the little children of Rosario not all that long before.
Potential can so often be denatured by the blight of adolescence, the windy path that bears no sign.
The child genius doesn’t always end up with the arms outstretched by the corner flag and the badge of FC Barcelona embroidered on the breast.
When nature called for Ding Junhui’s father at the local pool club, his eight-year-old son picked up the cue and served humble pie to a Chinese professional.
By 2005 he was doing the very same to Steve Davis in the final of the UK Championship.
Often the early riser falters and the late developer flourishes. Sustained excellence requires an unattainable ruthlessness for most children. It’s unnatural.
As a famous Chinese proverb goes:
“The straightest tree is the first to be cut down. The well with the sweetest water is the first to be drained.”
Outside the Olympic Games, China has never been a country fixated on sport, despite a population that now stands at 1.4 billion.
And the Olympics was the easiest method of rolling out a ‘soft power’ strategy, with the Chinese flag and anthem centre stage with any success. The most recent Winter Olympics in Beijing saw a reported spend of over £30 billion. It’s propaganda for the cynical eye.
But it suits China to focus on elitism. Individuals can be headhunted and supported at a government level.
China qualified for their only ever FIFA World Cup in 2002. They failed to score a goal and were ranked 31 of 32 teams.
At the 2024 Paris Olympics, China competed in all sports bar handball, and interestingly, football. They and the USA recorded the most gold medals with 91 as they finished second in the medal table.
Their all-time medal haul is dominated by artistic gymnastics, diving, table tennis, shooting and weightlifting. All fairly niche and individualistic.
So as Japan star on the world stage in soccer, rugby and elsewhere, China don’t. The government aren’t interested in the depth of resources required to compete in team sport.
Basketball is the only exception due to a strong domestic league that almost mocks the faltering Chinese Super League.
Former Chelsea forward Oscar was once a statement signing. How times have changed now his eight years in Shanghai have come to a conclusion.
Fellow Brazilian Cryzan is now the league’s most valuable player according to Transfermarket, with the striker’s record at Portuguese side Santa Clara reading an unimpressive: Played 58, Scored 14.
Saudi Arabia is now the humble abode of a gold digger.
Which brings us to snooker. The upcoming Masters, featuring the world’s top 16 players, will see three Chinese players head to a slightly subdued Alexandra Palace, now that darts fever has chanted and stumbled its way out the door.
But it hasn’t always been like this.
Ding Junhui is not to snooker what Lionel Messi is to football. Not to us. But in China he is.
A Chinese TV audience of 110 million watched him beat Stephen Hendry when the affectionately-named ‘Little Ding’ was just 17.
In 2010 Dragon Ball No.1 hit the TV screen, a 26-part animation series based on ‘the growth of a shy boy to a snooker star’. Based on the ascent of none other than Ding.
Ding Junhui was a trailblazer, caught in the eye of the perfect storm as China began to pump money into snooker. Back in 2016, World Snooker chairman Barry Hearn summated the culture change:
“Snooker in China is a national sport and it is part of the school curriculum in most places. There are literally millions and millions of players and, of course, they are producing some outstanding talent.
“Most people will know Ding Junhui but there is a whole raft of 15 to 19-year-old boys that I think are poised to take the game to the next level.”
He has been proven right.
The first China Open took place in 1997, with prize money of £150,000 up for grabs. That figure is now over £1 million, with Ding the first Chinese winner in 2005. Perfect storm you say.
An English sport has become the third most popular sport in a non-Commonwealth country. There are now more people that play snooker in China than the rest of the world combined. Remarkable.
Ding has capitalised on that fact. He is equally the rationale behind it. Like the oxpecker on the hippo’s back, it’s interdependence.
So how about the other side of the coin? How did the man give back to the game? Well his father saw his talents that day as an eight year old in the local pool club.
By 11 he was taken out of education to practice snooker. His family sold their grocery business, packed their bags and left home to chase the dream of a talented child, but a child nonetheless.
By 15, he was the best underage player in all of Asia, claiming the U21 title, and when his first UK Championship title came three years later, he was the first player from outside Britain or Ireland to win it.
Ding Junhui was opening snooker up to more than just China, he was opening it up to the world.
Now a resident of Sheffield with his own snooker academy, he is the greatest Asian player to ever hold a cue.
He stands today with three UK Championships, the first Asian to make the World Championship final (with 210 million Chinese viewers) and the 2011 Masters title that he aims to regain in the coming days and weeks.
It’s now 14 years since he beat Marco Fu 10-4 in the first ever all-Chinese Masters final. That was a huge chunk snooker history our European-ness may be too biased to fully acknowledge or understand.
And yet the snooker world hasn’t always stood with open arms or a bowed back. As recently as 2023 he was docked a frame for wearing brown trousers at the all-black English Open:
“I totally forgot,” Junhui professed. “My memory is not good!”.
In 2013 he lost out to world number 75 Michael Walsey in the World Championship.
A year later he was world number one and lost out to an amateur - England’s Adam Duffy - in the UK Championship. With it came a foul-mouthed rant. Out of character, but a sign of the pressure he faced with giant, expectant crowds at home:
“It was c**p. F****** four tables and everything is going wrong.,” Ding said to the BBC.
“I don’t want to say any more about this. It’s just c**p. It’s for amateurs.
“I don’t think the tables were right, I don’t think the fans were right. It was all rubbish.”
But his relationship with Ronnie O’Sullivan has been central to his popularity that defies linguistic and cultural barriers, with the Englishman replaced by Neil Robertson in this Masters tournament, pulling out due to health reasons.
His unpredictability still knows no bounds in the winter of middle age.
But where ‘The Dragon’ has stood, ‘The Rocket’ has never been far away, an unlikely display of empathy from one to another. Two men that could hardly have lived different lives away from the table.
The 2007 Masters final saw Ding soundly beaten by the 49-year-old. He later admitted he thought the final was best of 17, rather than best of 19. As he cried, it was O’Sullivan who consoled him.
Ding knew - even in his youthful innocence - that he was no bad player.
That same year he had claimed the first 147 in The Masters since Kirk Stevens in 1984. There’s only been five in Masters history. Ding has two of them.
In more recent years, his friendship with O’Sullivan has blossomed from those father-son like early interactions:
“(Ding) is such a good man - he was a boy when I first started playing him but he’s a man now, a father, a credit to China.
“I call him the Godfather of Chinese snooker, he paved the way for everybody else to believe they could come here and do it.”
O’Sullivan had always been the thorn in his side however, and prior to a seismic win over the Essex man in the 2017 World Championship quarter-final, his head-to-head win rate was just 17 per cent.
In 2019, Ding beat O’Sullivan again en route to another UK title, before a slide in form saw him miss out on the 2022 Masters.
Stephen Hendry was among a host of commentators to express concern:
“Any pressure balls he does not look like getting anymore. I don’t know where Ding goes from here.”
The child prodigy had never experienced the likes of this. Now the fourth best Chinese player on the circuit, the bridge he built was crumbling as others availed of the footprints in the ruins.
Ranked 38 in the world for the 2022 UK Championship, he was a faded force in the eyes of many.
Then a 6-0 whitewash of O’Sullivan, nothing short of a shock. Huge.
Last year he was back in The Masters, normal service resumed. Form is temporary and all the rest of it.
And as the man himself says, he ain’t finished yet as his 38th birthday approaches. After all, Monday’s opponent Mark Williams is 11 years his elder:
“Success is not just about winning, it’s about improvement. Every time I play, I want to learn something new.”
‘Little Ding’, the shy boy with the world’s biggest snooker army and a cartoon series to boot.
He has personified the Chinese proverb’s straightest tree that has eluded the axe since he was eight years old, try as they might to hack him down.
The Lionel Messi of snooker? Maybe. Small in stature, big in heart, and pressure that has no comparison. His best days perhaps behind him.
Talented. Valiant. Tough.
And the most important of all, a giver of joy. Capable of magic things, all with a smile on the face and a glint in the eye.
Ding Junhui, do as I do, not as I say. Actions speak louder than words.