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How sad it was to learn of the recent death of Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins, at the age of 61. A tortured genius, Higgins sometimes seemed better suited to bare-knuckle boxing in the back streets of Belfast than he was to snooker, yet with a cue in his hands, and when the mood took him, Higgins was untouchable among his peers over the green baize.
The rise of Higgins to becoming World Champion for the first time in 1972, aged 22, at his first attempt, remains one of the great achievements by a British sportsman – albeit a sportsman who smoked 80 a day at times – and it was this anti-establishment maverick in an open collar who did more than anyone to attract a younger crowd to snooker and gave the sport mass appeal as it emerged into its boom era of the 1980s.
It was recently reported that in snooker’s hay-day of 1984, two years after Higgins famously won the second of his World Championship titles, the BBC broadcast 335 hours of snooker, compared to 187 of football. And the TV ratings converted into snooker retail sales too, and pub and club landlords throughout the UK cashed in by installing more snooker and pool tables.
