O`Sullivan's 2014 or Selby's 2016/17?

As you'll have noticed, this text will compare what were in my opinion the best years of Ronnie O`Sullivan's and Mark Selby's careers - two of the greatest players of all time and without a doubt the two best players in the World for the last few years now. But before I start to argue a few things must be clarified: the obvious arguments of "Selby's was better because he won the World Championship in 2016 and O`Sullivan didn't in 2014," or that "Mark was better because he himself beat O`Sullivan in the World Final in 2014" are not valid, firstly because what Selby did in 2014 or O`Sullivan did in 2016/17 has no matter in this at all - it's all about what O`Sullivan did in his year and what Selby did in his season -, and even though the World Championship counts a lot and O`Sullivan didn't win it in fact, he was runner-up and played that year the best snooker ever played at the Crucible despite he did not win it (he wasn't far from doing so anyway). And of course, you cannot think Selby achieved what he did "because he played much more and because he plays 'boring' snooker" - even if you take out only percentages and averages his numbers are impressive and pretty similar to Ronnie's, and in fact in 2016/17 he was more aggressive than the vast majority of his opponents, scoring heavy and going for his shots (not to say you can't blame him for O`Sullivan's lack of table time in 2014).

So, you should really read it until the end before agreeing or disagreeing with me.

It might sound funny to compare a calendar year to a season, but it doesn't make much difference in Snooker really as - different from other sports that make their season out of the final half of one year and the first half of the next - in Snooker we don't have tournaments that start in one year and end in the next, and all tournaments are played every year, what means Ronnie and Mark played - or could've - during these periods the same tournaments.

Basically O`Sullivan's 2014 and Selby's 2016/17 are very cleary described in the graphic. Mark won twice as many matches as Ronnie, but played in exact twice as many tournaments; In terms of Centuries, to see Mark made more than Ronnie proves what a prolific break-builder he was in the best season I've ever seen a player play myself - however, O`Sullivan's 47 Centuries are much more impressive when you realise they were made in only 40 matches; Of course, O`Sullivan leads 2-0 in 147 Breaks, and made them during tournaments he went on to win (what matters a lot), but he trails by more than £200k in terms of prize money won - even though we can't forget O`Sullivan played 50% of what Selby did and prize money itself increased a lot from 2014 to 2016/17 (not forgetting that O`Sullivan didn't even hit jackpot at the Crucible).

Selby then has one semi-final and five titles out of six finals while O`Sullivan had no semi-finals and four titles out of five finals. But despite that, it's impressive that O`Sullivan had early exits in only 20% of the tournaments he played (winning 40% of them) while Selby has 40% of early exits and 25% of titles won.

It's undeniable though that Selby's five tournament wins were all in Ranking Tournaments, to equal the World Record for most in one season - and they were not just Ranking Events, but five of the most important ones, including a curse-breaking China Championship-World Championship sequence.

However, even if the balance tends to Mark's side right now there are a couple things that sets Ronnie apart:

The five more important tournaments are the four BBC ones (World Championship, The Masters, UK Championship & Welsh Open), and the Champion of Champions on ITV. And in those five tournaments O`Sullivan was superb, winning four of them and being 2nd place in the World Championship. Selby of course won the World Championship itself plus the UK Championship, but in the other three he didn't do very well: Last 32 defeat in Wales and Round 2/Quarter-Finals defeats in the Masters and Champion of Champions.

Another thing that weights in favour of O`Sullivan are the big remarkable performances in matches. Selby himself had his big games: 10-1 v Ding Junhui in China for the International Championship title, 10-7 v Ronnie O`Sullivan for the UK Championship title, and the World Championship in general, principally a 13-3 v Marco Fu in the Quarters and that epic 17-15 v Ding Junhui in the Semi-Finals. But you need not to force your memory to remember O`Sullivan's epic matches in 2014 that will forever be remembered: a 6-0 in under an hour v Ricky Walden in the Quarters of the Masters (a match that many consider to have been perfect and the best session of Snooker ever played by any player), followed by a 10-4 v Mark Selby later in the Final; then a perfect Welsh Open that ended with superb results like a 5-1 v John Higgins in the Quarters, a remarkable 6-2 v Barry Hawkins in the Semis and a thrashing 9-3 defeat of Ding Junhui in the Final finished off with an unbelievable 147 marked by left-handed shots.

And then despite a Final disappointment at the Crucible he played an incredible World Championship, following an epic 13-11 win over Joe Perry in the last 16 with victories with a session to spare against both Shaun Murphy (13-3 in the Quarters) and Barry Hawkins (17-7 in the Semis).

To finish off, O`Sullivan won the Champion of Champions beating Judd Trump 10-7 in which was for me the best best of 19 match ever played in terms of high quality snooker, before claiming the UK title in another epic match v Trump (10-9 this time) - a championship he had demolished his opponents on his way through (highlighted by a 147 in a 6-0 win over Matthew Selt in the Last 16).

Of course both O`Sullivan's 2014 and Selby's 2016/17 were incredible and it's a tough job to find flaws in it, but in my opinion O`Sullivan comes out on top in this comparison simply because he's a better player and his best performances of 2014 were better and more remarkable than Selby's in 2016/17, even though they were great too. O`Sullivan scores heavier, thrashes his opponents and show off more than Selby and at this level it can be the key to choose one. You can argue that Selby was more dominant in 2016/17 than O`Sullivan was in 2014, but that's a bit of an illusion caused by the fact Selby won the big ranking tournaments and opened such a big gap in front of the World No2 (O`Sullivan didn't even hit No1 in 2014) - Ronnie won a bigger percentage of the tournaments he played in, and concentrated his wins on the bigger tournaments (regardless of ranking status), and that proves he was effectively the better player.

Of course to compare O`Sullivan's best 12 months to Selby's best 12 months is very different to compare their careers and tell who's the best overall, and there's no point in making that comparison right now as they're not even close from each other. At 34 Selby is still young for Snooker standards, but O`Sullivan will have something to say yet at 41, time will tell if one day we'll need to debate who's been the best.

If you're still hungry for stats, you can read my text where I debate who's been O`Sullivan's greatest career rival, and as I think that's Mark Selby you'll find a big head to head analysis between them. Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone who likes Ronnie O`Sullivan Brasil on Facebook as we just reached 3,000 likes!