Ronnie O’Sullivan heads to Crucible with chance to cement status as best ever

Ronnie O’Sullivan may claim not to care about records, but the magnitude of his quest to eclipse Stephen Hendry and claim a record-breaking eighth world snooker title in the modern era cannot be understated.

O’Sullivan heads to the Crucible as reluctantly as ever, yet he is arguably never in a stronger position to go one better than his great rival and further enhance his surely unarguable status as the greatest snooker player of all time.

It is a mark of his true greatness that O’Sullivan finds himself in such a position at the age of 48, and having adopted an almost lackadaisical public approach to his sport, picking and choosing his events and constantly deriding his own performances and occasionally those of his peers.

While other players sweat and toil and chisel their way deep into the Crucible’s 17 days, O’Sullivan will waft in and out with an agenda led by the prospect of lucrative exhibitions and ambassadorial deals with the likes of Saudi Arabia, further underscoring his status as simply a player apart.

There are a handful who have proved themselves more than capable of sinking O’Sullivan – not least his fellow ‘Class of 92’ star Mark Williams, who routed him 10-5 in the Tour Championship final last month and is exhibiting some of his best form in years.

Mark Selby, despite another torrid season which resulted in him recently threatening retirement, still summoned a rare 6-0 whitewash of O’Sullivan in February, while emergent Chinese star Zhang Anda beat him in back-to-back tournaments earlier in this campaign.

Yet it remains abundantly clear that having withdrawn from no fewer than seven ranking titles this season for various medical and mental health reasons, the biggest threat to O’Sullivan clinching that