Simon Dalton presents his prediction for the 2024 Championship League snooker match.
John Higgins
John Higgins is the favourite of this match. This experienced player is currently 12th in the world ranking. He’s stable and performs well, especially if there are not so many frames in a game. The performance depends on a status of a tournament. This one is invitational. Higgins lost the game against Mark Selby (0:3) but won the match versus Neil Robertson with the same result. This thing has been haunting Higgins recently.
Barry Hawkins
Barry Hawkins beat Neil Robertson with the same result as John Higgins. However, he lost the match against Jimmy Robertson (1:3). The Australian player has been in crisis for several months, and it wasn’t a big problem to beat him. But the defeat in the game versus Jimmy Robertson was surprising. The last year was good for Barry, he reached late stages of some important tournaments and earned quite a good deal of prize money.
Higgins vs Hawkins prediction
Yes, Hawkins can be weaker than Higgins to some extent. But you shouldn’t focus on this in this particular game. This is going to be the last game of the day for both players, they will have played two other games by that moment. This is why I believe that the Scottish player won’t wait until the last game and will prefer to play better the first two matches. Barry will have quite average opponents in these two games, while Higgins will face Kyren Wilson prior to this game, and this opponent will demand focusing on the match.
