Badsnookerplayer wrote:OK - point taken.
What I was getting at was from Pink Ball's original list, those that I highlighted wouldn't be viewed as 'surprise' winners whereas the others would. 'Surprise' is a better word than 'weak'.
Yes.
Nobody is claiming that there aren't levels. There are. Of course, people like Ronnie and Hendry are higher on the all time great list than players like Bingham or Dott. I don't believe anybody is arguing that.
The debate seems to be on how you define the word; "weak". Being the weakest ever World Champion is a bit like being the poorest multi-millionaire in the world.
Take Bingham. He was World Number 10 when he won The Crucible. He had previously won two ranking events, and the Premier League. Nobody, myself included, would've predicted his win before the tournament started. But he had an incredibly tough route to get there, and he won it. The BBC pre-final were making out that Bingham was some kind of nobody, despite his prior achievements. There were only two places in the ranking between him and Murphy.
Also, last year, when the news came out that Joe Johnson's kids had taped over his title winning achievement with cartoons, I saw a presenter on the telly refer to him as; "An amateur who won the World Title". He was in the top-16 in the World.
There's a difference between not being one of the five greatest players of all time, and being weak. I'm a weak snooker player. One-Crucible wonders like Bingham and Dott are not.