60 million players and counting: Is this UK-dominated sport about to have a Chinese revolution?

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

Trailing 12-10 in a best of 35 frames World Snooker Championship final, China’s Wu Yize slipped out a back door of the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield and steadied himself with a quiet moment, away from the bright lights and the baize.

Hours later, he was standing centre stage as a world champion.

After moving to the United Kingdom as a teenager – at times sharing a bed with his father in a windowless room – the 22-year-old from Lanzhou, in northwest China, completed one of the sport’s most compelling ascents, overturning a deficit to defeat England’s Shaun Murphy in front of an estimated television audience in the tens of millions of viewers in his homeland.

By Monday evening, Wu had potted his way to victory, becoming the second-youngest winner of snooker’s most prestigious event - Stephen Hendry won as a 21-year-old in 1990 - and the latest symbol of a seismic shift in the sport’s power base.

His triumph made it back-to-back Chinese world champions following Zhao Xintong’s breakthrough 12 months earlier – a remarkable turn for a tournament that, from its inception in 1927 until 2024, had never been won by an Asian player.

For........

© The Age