No Ronnie O'Sullivan, Neil Robertson or Judd Trump: What shock Tour Championship line-up tells us ahead of Crucible

Anyone who predicted that not one of Ronnie O’Sullivan, Neil Robertson, Judd Trump, John Higgins or Mark Williams would be in Hull deserves either a pat on the back or equal billing at Derren Brown’s next stage show. These star names have between them reached only one ranking final all season: Trump lost to Mark Allen in the World Grand Prix’s title match in January. Ad Trump did win the Masters and O’Sullivan was successful at the Champion of Champions, but these are not ranking events and so didn’t count towards Tour Championship inclusion.

Tour ChampionshipTour Championship — Latest scores, results, schedule, order of playYESTERDAY AT 09:45 But the players who make up the field have all deserved their places. Allen has won three ranking titles this season and Mark Selby two. Shaun Murphy and Ali Carter have each appeared in two finals, winning a title apiece.

Kyren Wilson, Robert Milkins and Ryan Day have each won a ranking event, while Ding Junhui held on in eighth place by one frame as Gary Wilson lost 5-4 to Pang Junxu in the WST Classic semi-finals this week to agonisingly miss out. This is the grateful eight, delighted to be just three victories away from a first prize of £150,000. For audiences, it will be an intriguing week as the spotlight shines on some players who have spent much of their careers as part of the circuit’s supporting cast.

This is only the fifth staging of the Tour Championship but it already feels like one of the calendar’s biggest events, not least because all matches are best-of-19 frames. Snooker benefits from having a range of formats but, to many players and fans, multi-session matches are the proper stuff. They allow time for the narrative to shift, for momentum to build and for epic