Snooker is a cue sport that was first played by British Army officers stationed in India in the second half of the 19th century. It is played on a rectangular table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six pockets, one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. The game is played with twenty-two balls, comprising a cue ball, fifteen red balls, and six other balls — a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and black — collectively called the colours. Using a cue stick, the individual players or teams take turns to strike the white cue ball to pot other balls in a predefined sequence, accumulating points for each successful pot and for each time the opposing player or team commits a foul. An individual frame of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points. A snooker match ends when a player reaches a predetermined number of frames.
Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. The game takes place on a hard table divided by a net. Except for the initial serve, the rules are generally as follows: players must allow a ball played toward them to bounce once on their side of the table and must return it so that it bounces on the opposite side at least once. A point is scored when a player fails to return the ball within the rules. Play is fast and demands quick reactions. Spinning the ball alters its trajectory and limits an opponent's options, giving the hitter a great advantage.
The Championships, Wimbledon, commonly known simply as Wimbledon or The Championships, is the oldest tennis tournament in the world and is widely regarded as the most prestigious. It has been held at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London since 1877 and is played on outdoor grass courts, with retractable roofs over the two main courts since 2019.
Ping-pong diplomacy refers to the exchange of table tennis (ping-pong) players between the United States (US) and People's Republic of China (PRC) in the early 1970s, that began during the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, Japan as a result of an encounter between players Glenn Cowan and Zhuang Zedong. The event paved the way for President Richard Nixon's visit to Beijing in 1972 and has been seen as a key turning point in relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China.
Karl Peter Karlsson is a table tennis player. He was 1991 World Champion in men's doubles, and 2000 European Champion in men's singles.
Zhuang Zedong was a Chinese table tennis player, three-time world men's singles champion and champion at numerous other table tennis events and a well-known political personality during the tumult of the Cultural Revolution. His chance meeting with American table tennis player, Glenn Cowan, during the 31st World Table Tennis Championship, later referred to as ping-pong diplomacy, triggered the first thawing of the ice in Sino-American relations since 1949. Zhuang was once married to the pianist Bao Huiqiao, and his second wife was the Chinese-born Japanese Atsuko Sasaki (佐々木敦子).
Barry Maurice William Hearn is an English sporting events promoter and the founder and President of promotions company Matchroom Sport.
Matchroom Sport is a sporting event promotions company founded by English entrepreneur Barry Hearn and run by Hearn and his son Eddie Hearn. It first came to attention in the sports of snooker and boxing and is also involved in pool, bowling, golf, fishing, darts, table tennis, poker and gymnastics. The company is based in Brentwood, Essex. Matchroom has broadcasting agreements in the United Kingdom with Sky Sports, the BBC and ITV.
ITV Sport is a sport producer for ITV. It was formed following the merger between Granada Sport and Central Sport.
Mark Allen is a Northern Irish professional snooker player from Antrim. He won the World Amateur Championship in 2004, turned professional the following year, and took only three seasons to reach the top 16. In his fourth professional season, he beat the defending champion Ronnie O’Sullivan en route to the semi-finals of the 2009 World Championship, where he lost to the eventual winner John Higgins.
Matthew Philip Syed is a British journalist, author, broadcaster and former table tennis player. He competed as an English table tennis international, and was the English number one for many years. He was three times the men's singles champion at the Commonwealth Table Tennis Championships, and also competed for Great Britain in two Olympic Games, at Barcelona in 1992 and at Sydney in 2000.
In the United Kingdom, sporting events are broadcast on several national television networks, as well as radio.
Andrew Baggaley is a professional table tennis player from Milton Keynes. He is England's leading table tennis medal winner of all time in the Commonwealth Games, winning two gold medals in Manchester, England (2002), 1 silver medal in Melbourne, Australia (2006), 1 silver and 1 bronze medal in Delhi, India (2010) and 1 silver in Glasgow, Great Britain.
Ichiro Ogimura was a Japanese table tennis player, coach, president of the ITTF and former World No. 1 who won 12 World Championship titles during his career. Ogimura was also a key figure in the Ping Pong Diplomacy events of the early 1970s, as well as being instrumental in Korea playing as a unified team at the 1991 World Table Tennis Championships.
Ariel Yenhua Hsing is an American table tennis player who competed in the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Maxim Shmyrev is a male table tennis player from Moscow, Russia. He is a multiple Russian National Champion in table tennis, winning Men Singles title five times. He is also a three-times world champion of ping-pong (sandpaper), having won the first three world championships in that discipline, from 2011 to 2014.
The 2018 UK Championship was a professional ranking snooker tournament, that took place from 27 November to 9 December 2018. It was the ninth ranking tournament and the first Triple Crown event of the 2018/2019 season. The event was broadcast on BBC Sport and Eurosport in the United Kingdom.
The 2020 PDC World Darts Championship was the 27th World Championship organised by the Professional Darts Corporation since it separated from the British Darts Organisation. The event took place at Alexandra Palace in London from 13 December 2019 to 1 January 2020.
This is a timeline of the history of ITV Sport, provider of sports coverage for the British ITV network and ITV Digital Channels.
