TNT Sports
Top 10 moments of 2022/23 snooker season: No. 9 – Mark Selby compiles ultimate 147 maximum in World Championship final
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Published 14/06/2023 at 12:28 GMT+1
The 2022/23 snooker season was another remarkable campaign with a smorgasbord of unforgettable memories bewitching millions across the globe on Eurosport, the home of snooker. We pick 10 of the most memorable moments from the past 10 months. Today we recall Mark Selby's historic 147 in the 47th Crucible final. Stream top snooker action live on discovery+, the Eurosport app and at eurosport.com.
'Wonderful moment' - Selby makes history with 147 in Crucible final
Video credit: TNT Sports
After the conclusion of another extraordinary snooker season, we pick 10 memorable moments from the 2022/23 campaign as captured by the Eurosport cameras. You can vote for your personal favourite when we reveal our final list of contenders later this month.
No. 9 – Mark Selby compiles ultimate 147 in world final
On the 40th anniversary of the maiden 147 break at the World Championship in Sheffield, it was perhaps fitting that we witnessed the first maximum in the final of the sport's blue-chip event.
with a fluke on the opening red while his engrossed opponent Terry Griffiths sucked the life out of a cigarette from his watching brief in a Crucible Theatre chair.
With 155 of the 189 competitive maximum breaks compiled this century, it feels like they play a different game since 'The Grinder' studiously plotted his path to his historic break.
Yet the unfettered joy of those feted 147 moments remain as poignant in the potting world's modern era as when a gasping commentator Jack Karnehm memorably muttered "Good luck, mate" before Cliff lined up the final black amid a groundswell of awe-struck adulation.
The fifth maximum of Mark Selby's celebrated career was a landmark achievement with nobody having managed the feat in a world final since the Crucible Theatre first housed the World Championship in 1977.
Trailing 9-6 to Luca Brecel in the second session of the final, Selby produced an emphatic response with a 147 that never seemed in any doubt as he cherry-picked 14 reds before teasing the 15th and toughest red down a side rail and into a top pocket with the rest.
The colours followed with an excitable sense of expectation.
"Just to make a 147 here is hard enough," said Selby. "I always thought that if I got myself in that position then I would be shaking like a leaf, but it was amazing how calm I felt."
It was to be the 14th 147 witnessed at the Crucible and the second of the 2023 event after Kyren Wilson produced the 13th against Ryan Day in the first round.
A split of £40,000 was the modest returns for both men, such is the regularity of 147 breaks these days, but this was special without the need for huge monetary rewards.
Selby prompted a 'Mexican Wave' as the four-time world champion remained inside the Crucible to revel in the significance of despatching perhaps the ultimate 147 in snooker history.
“The atmosphere when I potted that final black was electric and it was nice to give them a bit of banter back to keep them cheering," he said.
Selby would lose the final 18-15 to an inspired Brecel, but recording such a maximum for his personal collection of memoirs was not a bad consolation prize in the sport's grandest occasion.
Six-time world finalist Jimmy White, then sporting a memorable mullet, emulated Thorburn by compiling only the second 147 at the Crucible in 1992 and exclaimed on Eurosport: “That [Selby's 147] was absolutely magic.
“The last black to get on the last red down the rail, he played it to perfection. He just had to drop the red in there.
“To have a 147 on your CV at the World Championship, that’s another thing in his fantastic list of achievements. He’s absolutely buzzing.”
Even more so one would suggest at the end of a season when Selby battled back from mental health issues off the table to win the English Open in Brentwood – a victory he described as 'the biggest achievement' of his gilded career due to his personal plight – and the WST Classic in his home city of Leicester.
He would also earn an MBE at Windsor Castle for dedication to his sport and charity work.
In making his mark, Selby's majestic 147 was a regally unique occasion in its own right.
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Stream top snooker action live on discovery+, the Eurosport app and at eurosport.com
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