Snooker World Championships: What we want, what we really really want, is the stick and the candyfloss

COMMENT: Stuart Bingham has the stick – and snooker’s world title – but no candyfloss

Stuart Bingham completed an 18-15 victory over Shaun Murphy at the Crucible (Getty)

“You can’t have candyfloss without the stick,” record producer Pete Waterman once said, when asked to explain the success of The Spice Girls. “The stick is good, catchy tunes. You can have all the hype and the gimmicks you like, that’s the candyfloss. But try eating candyfloss with no stick and you’ll end up in a terrible mess.”

It’s not too great a stretch of the imagination to move this most poetic of metaphors into the sporting realm where, a week on, it is still up for debate whether somewhere inside the great mushroom cloud of candyfloss that exploded in the Nevada desert over Las Vegas there was a stick to be found.

Was it a good fight? Mike Tyson didn’t seem to think so. Others praised Mayweather’s grinding out, grinding down. Tiki-taka boxing, if you like: controlling, overpowering, defensive-minded attacking. For some, spellbinding. To others, a bit dull.

The alternative reality is the rarer one, and it was all over the BBC last weekend for two full days and evenings. A stick resplendent in its majesty, but with all candyfloss stripped away. Does anyone want to eat that? Even if it’s free?

I speak, of course, of Bingham v Murphy. Widely agreed as among the finest snooker World Championship finals of all time, but not the showdown the sport’s marketing men would have hoped for. Stuart Bingham, a 50-1 shot, a “very nice guy”, who’s been trying to win the big prize for more than 20 years, but who has never made it past the second round before now, swept all aside. Ronnie O’Sullivan, Judd Trump and finally Shaun Murphy, himself a man who should have achieved more in the decade since he won the tournament, but who seems to exude an air of underwhelming contentedness, not the depraved glare of a serial winner.

Ronnie O'Sullivan lost to Stuart Bingham in the snooker world championships (Getty Images)

What is it we most desire, as fans? The warm glow of watching an underdog triumph, or the wonder of a once-in-a-lifetime genius at the top of his game? To be able to say you saw Liverpool’s miracle in Istanbul, or the privilege of being around for Guardiola’s Barcelona? Goran Ivanisevic’s Wimbledon wild-card heroics or the other-worldly majesty of Federer?

Probably it’s both. Bingham deserved it. Of course he did. He was magnificent throughout, the final was spellbinding, and the nice guy did it the hardest possible way, confounding all expectations.

It might be a long time since what we all might think of as snooker’s glory days, when the firmament was littered with household names and unforgettable haircuts, and the air alive with cigarettes and alcohol. But, believe it or not, the sport is in superb health these days, growing around the world, and – despite the complete lack of a home-grown superstar – absolutely booming in Germany.

When a sport seeks to fulfil its imperialistic ambitions, fairy-tale matches are good, but fairy-tale stories are better. Oscar Pistorius is, unfortunately, the finest example there is. His unimaginable fame was no accident. It wasn’t a hard job, but the Paralympic movement’s marketing men almost bet the house on him. His remarkable life, of a tiny baby having his legs amputated, then rising to sprint in the Olympics, was an easy story to sell. His loss to them now is a serious one.

Snooker is a curious case. Stephen Hendry regularly gets angry at the praise heaped on the young, charismatic Trump who, by common consensus, “attacks the game,” “takes on the pots,” “plays with no fear”.

“I played exactly like that,” Hendry said in 2013. “I won my seven world titles playing exactly like that. You won’t win a World Championship if you don’t play like that.” Yet people still recall him as boring.

Bingham too was stunning. The long pots, the break-building magnificent. But in the important business of shifting candyfloss, the likes of O’Sullivan and Trump will always be the sticks that count.