Higgins has left his sport snookered

Predictably, Monday’s media casts its finger of shame directly at John Higgins after allegations of match-fixing were brought against snooker’s world No. 1. Kevin Garside says most accurately what we are all wondering in his article for the Daily Telegraph...

Another hero on the make, allegedly. The story engulfing former world snooker champion John Higgins is sport's greatest curse; he is the boxer who took a dive, the batsman who played all around a straight one, the jockey who did not try.

No sportsman can survive the moment the face in the crowd no longer trusts what he sees. On a scale of rotten deeds, the active fixing of an outcome by a participant ranks highest.

The drug cheat pumps shame as well as chemicals into his system and spreads the cancer of doubt throughout his sport. That is bad enough. But somehow not as pernicious as throwing a game.

At least the sprinter, the cyclist, the weight-lifter is trying to enhance performance to win. That we kind of understand, if not tolerate. But not to try, to chuck it in, kills the essence of sport.

Tiger Woods betrayed many an ideal with his carnal gymnastics but the damage was limited to himself. The integrity of golf survived. If the allegations against him are true, Higgins appears terminally snookered; a chicken in Kiev.

How many look back on the Crucible story of the fortnight: the recycling of Steve Davis as a contender once more, and recast the result in the light of the allegations Higgins faces? Was the hairy hand of greed informing Higgins' cue action? Did he miss the pink on purpose?

Davis and snooker deserve better than that question.