Veteran World Snooker Championship qualifier says he has ‘no chance’ at Crucible

Matthew Stevens is back at the Crucible for the first time in four years, but the 48-year-old is not getting carried away about his chances of World Snooker Championship glory.

The popular Welsh player was a fixture at the business end of the World Championship during the late 90s and early 00s, reaching two finals and three more semi-finals.

He never got his hands on the trophy, but came extremely close, losing 18-16 to Mark Williams in 2000 and by the same scoreline to Shaun Murphy in the 2005 final.

A former UK Championship and Masters champion, Stevens has had a fantastic career, but over the last decade he has managed few deep runs and has settled firmly into the middle rankings.

Still capable of brilliant stuff on his day, as he showed in an impressive 10-7 win over Stuart Bingham to return to the Crucible, Stevens accepts a lack of consistency means a World Championship title is out of his reach.

‘Well, I couldn’t win it when I was in my prime, so I can’t see me winning it, obviously,’ he said.

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‘Look at the players you’ve got to beat, the likes of [world champion Zhao] Xintong and all them players over three sessions. At the end of the day, I’ve probably got no chance of winning it.

‘I’ll just go there, and if I can cause an upset or two, then you never know what could happen.’

It is more realism than despondency from the former world number four, who downed world number one Judd Trump at the Xi’an Grand Prix this season.

‘Well, I keep saying it every year, but I haven’t done it,’ he said on his chances of adding any silverware to his collection. ‘It’s just keeping it up, I suppose.

‘I’ve beaten Judd this year in China, and if you can beat someone like that, then it’s just being more consistent. I’m still a danger if I play well in any match.’

Motivation can be an issue for Stevens, but he found some in his final qualifier against Bingham thanks to seeing how the bookmakers priced up the match.

‘I didn’t have many expectations coming here, really,’ he said. ‘I suppose when I won my first match against Peter [Lines], I obviously had the ranking points, and it’s that different mindset when you go into a match against Stuart.

‘He was a 1/4, 1/5 favourite and I looked at that and I thought, in my own mind, I don’t think that’s the right price. That gave me a little bit of a challenge, really, to prove people wrong. Motivation, definitely.’

Consistency is bound to be an issue as players get older, especially as they practice less and less, which is an issue Stevens accepts.

‘I’m nearly 50 now! That doesn’t help,’ he told WST. ‘I don’t play as much as I used to, but I relaxed today.

‘I’ve probably played three hours in six months, I found something today and played ok. Stuart didn’t play to his best otherwise he’d have beaten me. I can still play a little bit, which I proved today.’

World Snooker Championship Judgement Days schedule

Tuesday April 14

11am & 5pm – all matches best of 19

Stuart Bingham 10-7 Matthew Stevens
Hossein Vafaei 10-4 Gao Yang
Aaron Hill 6-10 David Gilbert
Michael Holt 4-10 Zhou Yuelong
Jiang Jun 9-10 Stan Moody
Antoni Kowalski 10-8Jamie Jones
Jackson Page 8-10 Pang Junxu
Noppon Saengkham 8-10 Liam Pullen

Wednesday April 15

11am & 5pm

Jak Jones vs Luca Brecel
Lei Peifan vs Ryan Day
Xu Si vs Gary Wilson
Zak Surety vs Zhang Anda
Ali Carter vs Anthony McGill
Liam Highfield vs Oliver Lines
Fan Zhengyi vs Ben Mertens
He Guoqiang vs Jack Lisowski

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