'Something special' - O'Sullivan & Higgins renew rivalry

Sahadan kritik gelişmeler geliyor. 'Something special' - O'Sullivan & Higgins renew rivalry To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. This video can not be played Figure caption, When Higgins v O'Sullivan ended in heartbreak By Michael Emons Sport journalist at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield Published 7 minutes ago It was 30 years ago, but John Higgins remembers it as if it was yesterday. Two fresh-faced 20-year-olds going head-to-head in an epic quarter-final at the 1996 World Snooker Championship, with the Scot one frame away from defeating England's Ronnie O'Sullivan.

"That is one match that sticks in my mind," said Higgins. "I was 12-11 in front and I remember it as clear as day. " The colours are all on their spots – a regular training programme usually dispatched with ease for a man of his talent.

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Pot them all and he is in the semi-finals for the first time. Legendary commentator Ted Lowe, predicting trouble may be ahead in the Crucible cauldron, says: "The butterflies must be floating around his tummy. " Higgins, with perfect memory 30 years on, takes up the story: "I've got an easy clearance with the colours.

I normally pot the brown and just play off the side cushion and be above the blue. "This time I decided just to stun the blue down when you're under a bit of pressure. I was well below the blue.

I went round the cushion, went round the angles and landed a very tough rest shot. " Still, Higgins is only two shots from the semi-finals. But the tricky pink is missed, O'Sullivan cleans up, wins the decider and Higgins is out.

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In the semi-final, O'Sullivan then lost to Peter Ebdon, who was beaten by Stephen Hendry in the final. Image caption, Looking back - how TV viewers saw the two players introduced before their 1996 quarter-final "I might have won the World Championship two years earlier than I did," said a rueful Higgins, who admitted that was one of his most painful losses in his 34-year professional career. "It was a brilliant game.

We were only 20 and it was a slugfest, shot for shot. They are the ones that give you a bit of steel going forward, the games that make you as a player. "You never think of your good wins.

It'd be great if you thought of your good wins, but you always think of the ones that got away. " 'There were reports he was going to get thrown out' What made the pair's first Crucible match even more remarkable were the circumstances going into it. The night before, O'Sullivan faced a disciplinary hearing after he had assaulted a World Snooker press officer and could have been thrown out of the tournament.

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