Crucible king Mark Selby deserves his place among the greats of the game

Mark Selby is one of the greatest snooker players of all time.

There it is, I've said it.

On Monday night the Jester from Leicester landed a fourth world title in eight years when he beat Shaun Murphy 18-15 and took his ranking-event tally to 20.

Now level with John Higgins on four Crucible crowns, Selby also has three Masters and two UK Championships to his name and has moved back up to second place in the world rankings, closing in on Judd Trump.

But rather than plaudits, there has been plenty of criticism thrown at the newly crowned king of the Crucible for how he went about his business over the 17 days in Sheffield.

Selby is far from the most flamboyant player around the table and certainly doesn't play the most entertaining snooker, but he is there to win and that is exactly what he does.

Whether it was in jest or malice, the boos from the crowd aimed at Selby during the final over the bank holiday weekend were appalling and incredibly disrespectful.

On his way to the £500,000 first prize he beat three former world champions and was comfortably the best player on show.

The 37-year-old's record in ranking event finals is astonishing and another reason why he should be held in the highest esteem.

Since his defeat to Murphy at the 2014 World Open in China, Selby has lost only two of his 19 ranking-event finals, one of which was earlier this season to Ryan Day at the quirky and time-restricted Shoot Out – which shouldn't be a ranking event anyway.

There is also criticism that he doesn't score heavily enough, which is simply a myth.

Selby ranks sixth in the all-time century breaks list with 693, 12 of which were compiled as he conquered the Crucible this year.

Compare that to the previous three winners – Ronnie O'Sullivan in 2020 and Mark Williams in 2018 also bagged 12 tons each, while Judd Trump notched 15 two years ago.

It's not his scoring that makes Selby a formidable opponent, though. He is hard to beat because he is a lot less attacking in his choice of shot, he takes fewer risks and plays the percentages almost every time.

That is the root cause of all the dislike and criticism of him, along with the idea that he is an incredibly slow player.

Selby's average shot time during the championship was 26.66 seconds, which was quicker than nine of the other 31 players including semi-finalist Kyren Wilson.

In a post-match interview Stuart Bingham complained of Selby's gamesmanship and slow play during his 17-15 semi-final defeat, when in fact Bingham's average shot time was 0.3 seconds slower during the match.

When an opportunity to win the frame in a single visit is presented to Selby, the chances are he will clear the table and not hang about, but the moment anything goes wrong his safety play is tight and unrivalled.

He rarely presents chances to his opponents and will occasionally spoil the balls to make life as difficult as possible – play which no doubt would have contributed to the increase in Bingham's thinking time per shot – but Selby's method and approach should not count against him and should certainly not detract from his status within the sport.

He strongly denied Bingham's claims of gamesmanship and replied: "I’m not going to just go out there, lay down and roll them over the hole for him, what does he expect?"

His unflappable temperament and patience enables him to grind out any messy frames with his tactical guile, while his opponents struggle mentally, which has earned him the moniker of Tormentor from other players such as O'Sullivan.

In any debate of the best-ever player, the genius and natural talent of O'Sullivan along with the proficiency and success of Stephen Hendry, coupled with their world-title hauls of six and seven respectively, will always have them clear of the rest, but Selby is bang there among those in behind, regardless of whether his style of play is entertaining to the masses or not.

After lifting the trophy for the fourth time on Monday night, the champion said: "I don't want people saying 'He was great to watch, but he didn't win anything'.

"If you think I'm boring, watch Coronation Street."

I much prefer the drama of Sheffield to any on offer from Weatherfield, although the story is just as predictable whenever Mark Selby gets himself into a ranking event final.

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