In the early morning of December 7, Beijing time, the final of the 2020/21 World Snooker Championship finally came to an end, and Neil Robertson defeated Trump 10-9 to win the first ranking championship trophy of the season, engraving his name on this silver trophy for the third time in his career.
This is the third time in his career that the Australian has won the British Championship after 2013 and 2015. Only five people in history, O'Sullivan (7 times), Davis (6 times), Hendry (5 times), Higgins (3 times) and Ding Junhui (3 times), have won the treble of this famous event. In contrast, however, he was relatively less optimistic before the match, first, he had lost two finals this season - the English Open lost to Terre, and the crown was lost to Mark Allen; second, in his previous 21 encounters with Trump, the Australian was 9-12 behind, and in the four encounters in the ranking finals, Robertson had never won. The only time he played a major tournament was the 2019 crown, when he narrowly won the 10-9 tiebreaker.
In 2011, Trump had been debuting for six years, and when he beat Mark Allen 10-8 in the final of the British Championships to get his first exposure to the British Championships (and his first three-time champion), he had no other record than the China Open championship and the world championship runner-up trophy in the same year. When he lifted the British Championship Silver Trophy again nine years later, the number of ranking trophies in his name had reached 19, ranking sixth in the ranking competition. Since beating O'Sullivan in the 2018 Northern Ireland Open final to win the title, he has soared all the way in the past 25 months, reaching the ranking finals 12 times and winning 11 titles, only to lose 3-1 in the Champions League of this season's promotion tournament to Karen Wilson. This season, he has previously won the English Open and the Northern Ireland Open, and has won 15 consecutive games before the start of the final, which is obviously more optimistic.
In this season's English Open, Trump and Robertson also played the decider, the former laughing 9-8 to the end. And this time in the decider of the British Championship final, the two played even more intensely, from 1-1 draw to 9-9 draw, and finally "survived" the opponent became Robertson. In the first eight innings of the first half, Robertson scored two breakers and scored 69 points at the top of the first half, always in the lead in the first set, while Trump played the role of a catcher, shooting a single 128 point in the eighth inning to make the score 4-4.
Entering the second half, the situation began to turn around. Trump narrowly won 71-60 in the ninth inning to take the lead for the first time in the game, after which Robertson equalized with 94 points. Little won again, and Radish equalized again. In the 13th set, Robertson took the lead again, and it became a small equalizer, and Robertson chased after him. In the 16th inning, Robertson scored 115 points, the first clean sheet of the game. Immediately after the 17th inning, Little scored 95 points and kept a clean sheet on Robertson several times, and took the lead in getting the match point.
In the crucial 18th inning, Trump had a chance to end the game, but he simply made a red ball mistake, a single 48 points, Robertson's backhand was a 72 points, pulling the inning score to 9-9. Although there were no spectators in the arena, the tense and exciting atmosphere also reached a climax. Robertson lost the line to the defense after scoring 23 points, Trump did not rush to attack, after twenty minutes of defensive battles, The Little took the lead, but only played 11 points after a fatal mistake, and under pressure, Robertson actually only played 24 points and then sent the red ball to the bag mouth, Trump cleared the red and then turned to defense. After nearly an hour of fighting, Trump finally waited for Robertson's defensive mistake, but at the crucial moment, the simple powder ball did not score. Robertson scored the powder ball, and even he couldn't believe that he had such good luck.
As a result, Robertson's number of professional ranking titles also reached 19, on a par with Trump, only three behind Mark Williams. In the future, the open struggle between the two will probably continue.
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