Ronnie O'Sullivan approaches the Snooker World Championship inspired, motivated and with a familiar sneer

There was something faintly reassuring in Ronnie O’Sullivan’s response to the Snooker World Championship’s decision to ban fans from wearing football shirts in the Crucible. The tournament’s move to reaffirm its quaint values of Britishness with a dress code ironically scuppered one of its own institutions – Coventry City fan Brian Wright, who sits in the front row rocking a retro sky blue jersey each year – and O’Sullivan was unimpressed.

”You pay your money, you get your ticket, you should be allowed to wear whatever you want,” O’Sullivan said ahead of the tournament’s start on Saturday. “It’s quite laughable when you read it really. At darts they seem to be walking about in Superman outfits.” Even after all these years, snooker’s greatest asset still harbours a disdain for the people in charge, his alluring rebellious streak as healthy ever.

What makes this particular tournament so intriguing is that his game is also in rude health. O’Sullivan still retains that innate potting ability — see his ridiculous 98% pot success in October’s English Open final – and breathless break-building – see the beautifully controlled 147 he scored at the China Open. But this season he has also improved the safety side of his game, studying the magnets and pull-strings which bring the cue ball back to baulk.

O’Sullivan puts his tactical improvement down to the dedication he has shown to match-play snooker during practice, and that in itself says an awful lot about his state of mind; it takes discipline and an awful lot of motivation to eschew the satisfying clunk of balls hitting the pocket for the safety practice of nestling white after white behind a brown near the cushion.

The 42-year-old’s improved form has taken him back up the rankings to world No2, behind only the reigning world champion, Mark Selby. They sit at opposite ends of a draw with plenty of quality in between: like Ding Junhui, the best player on the circuit not to have won a world title; and Judd Trump, impulsive and mercurial but hugely talented; and John Higgins, now 42 but playing some of the best snooker of his career.

Ultimately, though, it is Selby, chasing a fourth title, and O’Sullivan, pursuing a sixth to match Steve Davis and Ray Reardon, who are the ones to beat. Selby is perfectly suited to the marathon, the two-week stint in a windowless room, frame after frame after frame, blotting out every distraction at the table and doing everything not to be driven to distraction in the chair. Mental fortitude is his strength.

It is O’Sullivan’s great unknown, however, and it is part of what makes watching snooker’s wonderful renegade a grand old tradition in itself. Asked whether he could take another step towards Stephen Hendry’s record of seven world titles, O’Sullivan was typically, and perhaps reassuringly, dismissive.

“To compare records is pretty difficult. The best record is someone like Roger Federer’s who’s done it in tennis when Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic were around so it makes that all the more impressive. If he was coming along now he’d probably win about 40 majors. I’m not sure how to measure myself against Stephen Hendry other than as long as I keep getting a buzz from snooker I’ll keep doing it.

“I’ve won it five times and it’s a nice feeling, but it’s probably not as good a feeling as you’d think it is.”