Cue boredom... Crucible crowd left yawning by snooker’s slowest frame

Nothing happened for almost an hour at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre on Friday night – and more than a million television viewers found it enthralling.

As Mark Allen and Wu Yize smashed the record for the longest frame of snooker yet played at the Crucible, former champions grumbled about a stalemate in which no ball was potted for 56 minutes, calling it a terrible advert for the sport. 

However, 1.4 million people stayed with it on BBC Two as the players exchanged 75 consecutive safety shots and tried to lure each other into an error, making it the most watched frame of this year’s World Championship. One man’s farce is another’s fascination.

Wu, a 22-year-old Chinese player, had led his veteran opponent from Northern Ireland by four frames after their first-to-17 semi-final on Thursday, but Allen won five in a row in the second session to lead 7-6. He had built a decent advantage in the next frame, too, but left the black ball over a corner pocket, which would play the central role in the drama to come.

With no easy pots on, the players took turns to nudge the remaining reds towards the black until there was a cluster of eight balls around it. Each then gently played the cue-ball up and down the table, flicking the reds to tighten the phalanx and hoping their opponent’s next move would finally topple the black, a foul. As it developed, spectators sarcastically cheered every slow approach shot.

Snooker has been likened to “chess with balls” and the referee can restart the frame if players agree there is a stalemate. With Allen 34 points ahead, he was happy for it to continue. The referee, Marcel Eckardt, finally told them they had three strokes each to develop the frame or it would be aborted. 

At this, Allen reluctantly fouled the black, giving Wu a chance to win, but a further half-hour of safety play followed. When the Chinese player finally ended it, the frame had lasted 1hr 40min 21sec, making it the . longest frame at the Crucible since the venue first hosted the World Championships in 1977. The previous tournament record was a mere 1hr 25min, set by Mark Selby and Yan Bingtao in 2022.

Pundit Steve Davis, the six-times world champion, called it “an embarrassment”, while Stephen Hendry, who has won it seven times, said it was “horrendous”, “ludicrous” and “the dark side of snooker”. Hazel Irvine, the BBC host, said: “We are imprisoned by frame 14.”

Yet sport can be at its most absorbing when nothing is happening – or rather when players are striving to force an error from each other. That 100-minute frame compares with the 103 minutes that Stuart Broad, the England cricketer, went without scoring a run against New Zealand in 2013, which helped his side to snatch a draw. Or the 29-minute rally – an astonishing 643 shots – in the tie-break of a tennis match between Vicki Nelson and Jean Hepner in 1984. For Allen, who at 40 was seeking to be the oldest first-time winner of the World Championship, staying in that frame was vital.

The session ended two frames short of its allocation because time had run out. When they returned yesterday morning, Wu won the next frame with a break of 142. From first pot to fluent last it took him only 8min 32sec.

Photograph by George Wood/Getty Images, IMAGO/Avalon