The long-overdue moment that a first Chinese winner of the World Snooker Championship finally arrived was supposed to be one of unalloyed joy. Yet now it’s here, there is an air of hesitancy around the celebrations – entirely because the man in question is Zhao Xintong.
Snooker is already a huge deal in China, with a market of 1.4 billion people dwarfing the traditional hotbeds of this still quaintly British sport, but having their own world champion has always been touted as the occurrence that would send it stratospheric.
