Snooker Player The Jester From Leicester: Leicester’s famous prankster Shaun Murphy defeats Mark Selby to clinch his fourth world championship. In the final session, Mark Selby beat off a spirited fightback from Shaun Murphy to win his fourth global snooker championship at a boisterous Crucible in Leicester. After sinking the final black under enormous pressure, Selby beat off a dramatic Comeback from his opponent in the final session to join John Higgins as a four-time winner.
It had been a rough year for the 37-year-old, who had just won his second British Open championship in 2017 when he lost in the first round as defending champion and lost his world number one position after more than two and a half years without a British ranking title. Talk of Leicester’s downfall turned out to be unfounded as the Englishman slowly but surely clawed his way back to the top, culminating in a stunning return to form this weekend, during which he lost only 11 frames in his first three matches.
He entered the last session with a 14-11 lead but was very conscious of the threat posed by Murphy, who had stormed into the final in a form reminiscent of his title-winning run as a fresh-faced qualifier back in 2005. Selby. For all the talk about how terrible his season had been, Murphy himself admitted that he had been astonished to find his game on the world’s greatest stage. In the end, Murphy squandered two chances to trim Selby’s lead to a single frame before he responded with back-to-back centuries, making it a case of what could have been.
Murphy won the opening frame of the final day, but he left the black dangling above the pocket in the following, allowing Selby to make what looked to be the crucial move, which he reacted with the first century of the final. Just as in his semi-final win over Kyren Wilson in which he racked up the last eight frames, Murphy elevated his game in the final frame with a stunning 100 to bring him to 13-10 and a brilliant long red that helped him get the final frame.
Selby VS Murphy Matchup
It was premature for Murphy to celebrate his deficit reduction with a fist-pump, as in the following round, Selby cheerfully scooped up a long red from Murphy’s bad break-off, and his ensuing 62 eventually proved sufficient for Leicester’s full command of the matchup. After a magnificent long red, Murphy fluffed the easiest of pinks, allowing Selby to fire a 66 and come within three frames of victory at 15-11 in the evening session.
They split the next two frames, but a courageous 58 from Murphy kept them alive at 16-13 going into the last mid-session intermission. A flawless 120 from Selby put him only one frame away from victory in the final, his second century of the match. Murphy, on the other hand, raised the chance of a stunning comeback by responding with back-to-back century breaks of 100 and 103 to cut the lead to 17-15. A tough red down the cushion was a step too far for him when Selby went down on a break of 38 in the next, and Selby duly cleared up in order to move shoulder-to-shoulder with Higgins on the all-time record.
The BBC quoted Murphy as saying about Selby: “He’s like super-granite. As it turns out, I’ve known him since we were nine years old, and he’s remained the same throughout our time together. It was a tough lead for him to take overnight in a match of this caliber and it definitely made the difference. This is very wonderful — every time you get to a global final you always do your utmost because it’s such a tough event to get there and you never know if it’s going to be your last or not. This is absolutely incredible.
While Shaun has performed admirably during the match, he also serves as an excellent representative for the sport, so it is nice to have him back. Even though everyone in the family understands what I’m going through right now, this has been a very poignant one for me since a few years back I had some truly dark days and the circumstances were terrible. In the wake of Selby’s victory, he said, “My ambition is to try and go back to number one, you still have enormous goals in your career, and I’m heading in the right route.”
Mark is finally out of the Shadows Cast by Leicester City
Achievements by Claudio Ranieri and Co. surpassed last year’s Crucible triumph by along by. This time around, nope.” There aren’t many rhyming nicknames worse than the one Mark Selby has to deal with. Even though “The Jester from Leicester” is an amusing character, it’s hard not to laugh at the absurdity of his costume.
If you ask him about the fact that his success in the World Snooker Championship last year was overshadowed by the Premier League triumph of his hometown team, he’ll admit that he agrees wholeheartedly. Yes, he says emphatically. In the same breath, I wasn’t very upset since Leicester won the league… I mean, how often is anything like that likely to occur? As a two-time world champion at the time, “I was fine with them taking the spotlight away from me.” On Monday night, Selby, a three-time champion, was beaten by John Higgins, the man he has supported his entire life, but he may comfort himself with the hope that things will be different this year.
The 2020–2021 year
The British Open was Selby’s first competition of the year. In the second round, he was beaten but returned to the top of the rankings after a three-month absence. During the first round of the 2021 Champion of Champions versus David Gilbert, Selby became the sixth player to break 700 in a row. He made it to the semi-finals of the World Grand Prix in December, however, he lost 3–6 against Neil Robertson after a 2–2 tie.
My Personal Life
When I was born on June 19, 1983, in Leicester, When Selby was eight, he started playing pool, and he was nine when he started playing snooker. He was provided free practice at Malcolm Thorne, brother of Leicester-born snooker star William Thorne, by Malcolm Thorne, who saw Selby’s snooker skill and gave him free practice at his brother’s snooker club, which Selby took full advantage of. Alan Perkins, a family friend, and snooker tutor took in Selby when his mother abandoned him at the age of eight and his father died of illness at the age of 16.
After his father’s death, he considered taking his own life, but Perkins urged him to focus on snooker instead, telling him that his father would want him to keep playing and give it his all no matter what. Selby joined the main professional tour two months later, having dropped out of school with no credentials. Snooker announcer Richard Beare gave him the moniker “The Jester from Leicester” because Selby enjoyed “a laugh and a joke” with him. Vikki Layton, the wife of world number one Mark Selby, is a former international pool player from Ipswich, Ireland. After meeting on the professional tour, they began dating in 2006.
After Selby proposed aboard a gondola in Venice, they became engaged in August 2010 and got married in Cancun, Mexico, in May 2011. Sofia, the couple’s only child, was born in 2014. Since he was a kid, Selby has been a lifelong supporter of Leicester City F.C. On the day when Leicester City’s open-top bus procession celebrated their promotion to the Premier League, he won the 2014 World Championship. Just 13 minutes after the squad had won their first Premier League title, he won his second world title. Eric Bristow and Raymond van Barneveld have both faced off in exhibition matches against Selby in Ibstock in Leicestershire.
