One of the points of make a protest is to do it in the most visible way possible, to try and get your point across. To this end, one of the extraordinary scenes that has been ever seen at the World Championship of Snooker at the Crucible, was this man releasing orange powder all over a snooker table in protest of pending approvals for new oil and gas projects in the North Sea. Personally I fail to see any kind of connection between snooker, the group the protestor is representing, or the cause, but it has provided the most dramatic set of images from any sporting event this year.
I will make not comment about whether or not this protest was useful or helpful, or whether or not it changed anyone's mind at all because quite frankly, I have no idea. What I will say though is that this protest has given us the possibility of a new sport - RALLYCROSS SNOOKER!
Cross Country running, MotoCross bike racing, Bicycle MotoCross (BMX), Rally Raid racing, Rally racing and RallyCross all exist. What I feel that this man has given us the possibility of is snooker which is played on different surfaces; just like RallyCross racing. This is not only eleven kinds of stupid, it fills me with eleven kinds of glee.
Snooker and Billiards as table games, are played on tables which are meticulously kept. Even the nap, the weft and warp, and the way that the way that surface has been brushed are all exploitable differences in the game. Just like shape of the undulations on a green in a game of golf, the nap, the weft and warp, and brush of the table all have noticeable effects on the way that balls roll across the table.
However, a layer of power would change the game entirely. Suddenly you have an environmental change which is going to be constantly different. When a ball passes across the table, it's going to compact the powder that it runs across, as well as creating little valleys and gullies in its wake. This isn't only true for the object ball but for every signal ball on the table. There would be a beautiful chaos about the little channels that the balls would make and remake as they ran hither, dither, and thither across the table.
A player might have to take into account that when a ball runs out of momentum due to friction, which it is going to do far more quickly because the surface is rougher, they it's more likely to be influenced by the little channels on the table. A skilled player might be able to use this to their advantage if they could direct balls to a few pockets and make those little channels on the table play to really useful ends. Of course that same little advantage might cause a ball to veer off course wildly as it tram tracked somewhere else.
Purists of the game are going to spit yellow, green, brown , blue, pink and black at this suggestion and that's fine. They can have their game. The devotees of the new RallyCross Snooker would have to invent their own tactics and learn the new game. Oh insanity, what trouble hast thou wrought?
Aside:
I have questions about what would happen if you placed a golf player like Tiger Woods on a regular municipal golf course like us mere mortals have to play on. Would the players who are on several million dollarpounds really be that good if they were to also play on a course which had rocks and things randomly assorted on the fairways? I once played a round of golf at Menindee Links Golf Club which was so decrepit that fairways were marked with nothing more than a series of coloured spikes in the ground. The whole gold course was entirely devoid of trees. The reason why it was called a "Links" course is that when it rained, there was the possibility of the whole course filling up with water and becoming a series of random lakes.
Aside 2:
What would happen if England and Australia played a Test Match at regular municipal cricket ground like us mere mortals have to play on? Would fielding be as sharp if they had to field on a ground where grass was a luxury and you ran over a literal dust heap? How do you thrust your hands into the ground, or dive for a catch, if it is guaranteed that you will get grazed and cut up. How brave would they be then?
Aside 3:
We do know what happens when we put cars, motorbikes, and even trucks over different surfaces. Max Verstappen might be the Formula One World Champion but he's just playing a roundy-round game when compared to Kalle Rovanperä.
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