O’Sullivan has achieved perfection in snooker but Hendry still stands alone

You may have seen the famous clip of Diego Maradona’s warm-up routine, from the second leg of Napoli’s Uefa Cup semi-final against Bayern Munich in 1989: the one where he is like a Marvel superhero with a football. It is not just that Maradona pogos up and down with the ball seemingly glued to his head. Or that he effortlessly juggles the ball on his knees while jogging – before upping the ante by then bouncing it repeatedly off alternate shoulders. It is that the greatest player of all time is doing all this, and many other nonchalant tricks and flicks, with his shoelaces untied.

Maradona’s extraordinary routine, which has been viewed tens of millions of times on YouTube, came to mind again while watching another renegade master, Ronnie O’Sullivan, caress, finesse and blast his way to another world snooker final. For retired professional-turned-pundit Alan McManus, the Rocket’s red and black combination against John Higgins were the best two shots back-to-back he has seen in a semi-final, while these eyes slightly preferred the blunt power of a red to the middle against Stephen Maguire. Either way, O’Sullivan has a rare knack of making the ball dance to his tune, just like El Diego.

And if he does win a magnificent seventh world title by converting his 12-5 lead over Judd Trump on Monday – a feat that would equal Stephen Hendry’s record – the clamour for him to be ordained as the greatest ever will become a crescendo. I am not quite there – yet. O’Sullivan is a genius. But I still make Hendry primus inter pares, by a squeak.

Let me build a case. It starts by pointing out that no one else in the modern era can hold a cue to what Hendry did in the 1990s, when he ruled the sport and was the youngest world champion in