As the game makes a comeback in China, a top world snooker official condemned the “despicable behaviour” of the players’ ringleaders who were suspended in June due to a significant corruption scandal on Friday.
The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) banned ten Chinese players for different durations of time after they discovered a large-scale match-fixing ring.
Liang Wenbo, ranked 72nd in the world, and Li Hang, ranked 71st, received lifetime bans from the game of snooker for coercing their younger teammates into engaging in corrupt activities.
Yan Bingtao, the winner of the 2021 Masters, was also prohibited until December 2027.
Jason Ferguson, the chairman of WPBSA, specifically targeted Liang and Li in an interview with AFP during the Shanghai Masters, alleging that they “manipulated” younger Chinese players who were at the time isolated in Britain due to the pandemic.
“Quite frankly, I found their behaviour to be despicable,” Ferguson stated.
In June, the WPBSA reported that Chinese players practicing and competing in Britain “felt lonely, bored and even more isolated” as a result of the pandemic.
The severe Covid regulations in China, which were loosened towards the end of last year, prevented them from traveling home.
Among the 10 players’ offenses were approaching other players to cheat, snooker betting, game manipulation, and match fixing.
“We have dealt with the ringleaders very severely,” Ferguson said, adding that “the elders of that group have certainly manipulated some of the younger ones.”
“I have no regrets about the merciless way I handled those people. Never again will they play snooker,” he declared.
“There were a couple of players in there that I’ve known from very, very young, who have come through the ranks and made it to the top of the sport, and that was a very sad thing,” he continued.
“But all it takes is one or two bad people to manipulate innocent people, and I felt very sorry for some of the younger players in that they got caught up because they were put in a very difficult position.”
a demanding setting
Ferguson, a former professional athlete, said as mainland China is the host of the first top-tier international snooker tournament since the pandemic in 2019.
Ronnie O’Sullivan, the current world number one and four-time Shanghai Masters champion, is hoping to continue winning with the
Ferguson stated that “demand for snooker is probably higher than ever” in China, which is a major market for the WPBSA, despite the scandal casting Chinese snooker in the wrong light.
In recent years, China has also produced an increasing number of elite players.
Ferguson stated that the way the WPBSA handled the match-fixing incident had “shown the Chinese snooker fans that they can have confidence in the sport”.
He declared that the organization was committed to meeting the more complex challenges posed by illicit betting and match manipulation.
“This latest phase was without doubt the most sophisticated way of corrupting matches that we have ever seen,” he stated.
“The issue is that new platforms for (illegal) betting are created every day along with new technology.
