John Higgins wins 28th Ranking Title in Daqing

This week saw the end of a great tournament in China, the International Championship. And I mean great in everything, the move from Chengdu to Daqing was very good for the Event, the crowd attended to it better and I didn't see any player unhappy with the city structure and reception. Obviously, all this makes the excellent standard we had in the table, and once again a fantastic show of how to play the game were made by the 4 times World Snooker Champion John Higgins, who beat David Gilbert to win the 28th Ranking Title of his career, which puts him one above Ronnie O`Sullivan and tied with Steve Davis, even though still 8 behind the record holder Stephen Hendry, who stands at 36 wins.

It was a fantastic build up to the Final, one of the greatest players the game has ever seen, against a young pretender just qualified for his first Ranking Final, aged 34 and ranked 40th in the World.
Higgins, as he's doing for most of 2015, demolished his opponents to reach the Final, highlighting a 6-0 defeat of Shaun Murphy, where the Scot made 5 Breaks over 50 including an 138 Total Clearance. Gilbert had close games, but comfortably went through his Semi-Final encounter against Thepchaiya Un-Nooh (a player who reached the semis in the Indian Open earlier this year and won the 6 Red World Championship this season) winning that 9-5.


In the Final Gilbert was clearing showing tension, what is normal when you're playing the biggest match of your career, but even though he started very well top scoring with an 100 Break. But from 4-4 John Higgins showed why he's won 4 World Championships and everything else, as breaks of 108, 129, 88, 88, 52 and 56 helped the World Number 12th to win the title, that in fact puts him on the 7th position.
However David Gilbert got to be proud of himself, he's in the best moment of his career having reached to the semis in the European Tour 3 weeks ago, and now really gave Higgins something to think about. I tell you what, with Higgins playing like that to win 5 frames out of 15 was fantastic for Gilbert, who now rises his Ranking up to 21st in the World, highest position of his career.
John Higgins for me is the best player of the season so far and with the big tournaments coming, I couldn't doubt that he can rise his number of 28 Ranking Titles and 9 Titles in Triple Crown Events.

See Results from the International Championship

Well done for World Snooker, WPBSA, CCTV, EuroSport and everyone involved with the tournament, it was really fantastic and hopefully it keeps in Daqing for more years.
Next event on the calendar will be immediately next week, with the European Tour event 4 (Bulgarian Open) running from Friday 6 to Sunday 8, and then after it it's time for the Champion of Champions running from Tuesday 10 to Sunday 15, November of course. Who will take the title this time as the only previous winner Ronnie O`Sullivan has withdrawn?

To follow all the action from the next Snooker tournaments and anything else around the Snooker World, follow us on Facebook.