Welcome to the weird world of mixed snooker

Doubles snooker is supposed to be a team game. Not for Mark Selby. The four-time men’s world champion began the new season doing his best to turn the first ever world mixed doubles tournament into a virtuoso display of individual potting, hitting a magnificent 134 on his first visit to the table. If this is the form he is taking into the tour after battling depression following the death of his father, the rest of the snooker world be warned.

It was an innovative start to the season in Milton Keynes. The new competition was screened live on ITV in the old Saturday afternoon World of Sport slot; you half expected Dickie Davies to appear between frames bringing viewers up to date with news from the wrestling in King’s Lynn.

But there was no such pantomime here. Advertised as the biggest showcase women players have ever had, the debut mixed doubles tournament offered a £30,000 prize for each winner.

Which is more than five times the largest purse available in the women’s game. Pairing the four top ranked women players with the four leading men, the idea was for each team to play the other three in a round robin qualifying stage played across two days.

With points available for each frame won, it was possible to qualify for Sunday evening’s best of seven final even if you lost a group game.

'You start to feel the pressure as you don’t want to let your partner down'

Which was just as well for Ronnie O’Sullivan and Reanne Evans. The two most decorated world champions in the game’s history (Evans has twelves titles, O’Sullivan shares with Stephen Hendry the men's record of seven) began the tournament up against Judd Trump and Ng On Yee.

The pairs arrived at the table wearing matching shirts, with a coloured flash running down the front that gave the impression they had done their ties a tad too short.

The tactics of both sides were fascinating to watch. On Yee, a renowned defensive bulwark, spent much of her time trying to restrict the opportunity for Evans, who followed her to the table, with a series of excellent safety shots. Meanwhile Trump and O’Sullivan, supposed to seize the opportunity to show their flourishes, took their time to get going.

Any assumption that the females would be overwhelmed by the cue strength of their male partners was quickly dispelled: in the first frame the opening 39 points were picked up by the women. Indeed O’Sullivan, who we last saw on television back in May engaging in a lengthy man hug with Trump after beating him in the final of the world championships in Sheffield, didn’t score at all until his fifth visit to the table.

'I was so nervous I could hardly get going'

Players were not allowed to seek their partner’s advice while at the table. But in their chairs, watching on as the other side played, O’Sullivan and Evans in particular, maintained a steady dialogue. The competitors alternated visits to the table with their partners, not shots. So it was possible to accumulate a good individual score. Trump, for instance, after he and On Yee had won the first through clever defensive work, dominated the second frame with a 75 break.

The third looked as if it was going to O’Sullivan and Evans, until On Yee turned round a 60-31 deficit with a brilliant clearance of 33. After winning the fourth frame thanks to Evans’s closing break of 62 O’Sullivan and Evans might have looked as if they could take some confidence into the evening session. But O’Sullivan, whose highest break of the afternoon was a meagre 23, appeared forlorn.

“I’m sorry I didn’t give Reanne much support out there,” said the world champion. “You start to feel the pressure because you don’t want to let your partner down. I feel a little bit I have let her down.”

The second match of the afternoon was very different. Selby, playing with Rebecca Kenna and Neil Robertson, who was partnered by the reigning womens world champion Mink Nutcharut, exchanged sizable breaks, with Selby’s 134 the stand out moment of the tournament's first day.

“I was so nervous I could hardly get going,” said Kenna, who was playing in front of sizable television audience for the first time. “It helped me a lot knowing he was in such form.”

O’Sullivan’s form, meanwhile, hardly picked up in the evening when he and Evans played a vital match against Robertson and Mink. Apparently succumbing to a gathering tension, the most gifted player of his generation was fouling and missing with unexpected frequency. But in a way his problems reinforced the potential of the format.

If on the same day we could see the great champion struggling, Selby hammering century breaks and women like On Yee and Kenna more than holding their own against the best of the men’s game, Sunday’s conclusion promises to be intriguing indeed.