World Championship semi-finalist Wu Yize is making fairly the impression on the Crucible, being in comparison with one former snooker celebrity.
Wu Yize is into the World Snooker Championship semi-finals (Picture: PA)
Wu Yize faces the match of his life on the World Championship, taking up Mark Allen in a marathon semi-final over the subsequent three days. The good 22-year-old has been talked about in snooker circles for some years now. For the broader British public nevertheless, they’re going to be watching a large amount this weekend of a participant they in all probability know little about.
Each Ronnie O’Sullivan and Shaun Murphy have mentioned in current months that they imagine Wu will someday develop into world champion. And for a lot of within the recreation, he has develop into a really vivid reminder of one in all snooker’s most flamboyant ever stars, who tragically died 20 years in the past. Paul Hunter was aged simply 27 when he died from most cancers in 2006, with the twentieth anniversary of his passing coming in October.
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Hunter was nicknamed the “Beckham of the Baize” due to his trendy play and dashing beauty. The Leeds man famously received the Masters thrice. And he memorably put his Masters remaining victory over Fergal O’Brien in 2001 all the way down to “Plan B” involving his then fiance Lindsey between the 2 periods of the match.
20 years on, Wu is bringing reminiscences of Hunter flooding again. When the Chinese language teenager beat John Higgins to win the Worldwide Championship title in November, the legendary Scot likened him to a previous rival. “Wu jogs my memory a lot of the late, nice Paul Hunter, the way in which he performs the sport. He is a brand new celebrity,” Higgins mentioned.
I spoke to Murphy about these Higgins feedback in January, and the Englishman was in whole settlement. “Wu is like Paul in so some ways,” Murphy mentioned. “The best way he holds the cue, his grip and hinge place, his bridge place. He is very very similar to Paul.
“He strikes like Paul did, he performs like Paul did. They used to say about Paul, you by no means knew if he was profitable or dropping, and I feel that Wu could be very related.”
Paul Hunter was referred to as snooker’s personal David Beckham (Picture: Getty)
Wu is having a dream run on the Crucible – the place he had by no means received a match earlier than this yr – along with his newest victory coming towards Hossein Vafaei within the quarter-finals.
Wu spends a lot of his spare time enjoying video video games and when he is not enjoying, loves watching snooker on tv. When he performs in China, some viewers could possibly be mistaken for considering followers are booing him. As an alternative, they’re shouting “Wuuuuu” in help for him.
Enormous tv audiences in China are positive to look at within the coming days as Wu goes for World Championship glory. And the probabilities are he’ll win loads extra new followers within the UK too.
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