Parrott happy to ditch cue

Parrott, the 1991 world champion, retired from the professional circuit last year to focus on family life, the "Legends Tour" and his growing TV work with the BBC covering snooker and horse racing.

The Liverpudlian, who beat Jimmy White 18-11 20 years ago, after he was humiliated 18-3 in the 1989 final by Steve Davis, said he had "no regrets whatsoever" about no longer competing at the elite level following a slump in form and world ranking.

"I got to the point where I was getting fed up with going back to qualifying (for tournaments)," the 46-year-old told Reuters during a break from his TV work at the Grand National at Aintree last Saturday.

"I don't miss the daily grind of practice.

"Without sounding too cocky, when you've been somewhere near the top and you don't play the same standard you used to and you are losing to players you consider inferior to you, it's really easy to get disheartened and consider it's time to pack in.

"It was the right decision. Life moves on."

Memories of his win over nearly-man White are still fresh for a player who first picked up a cue when his father purchased a small snooker table advertised in a local newspaper.

"He stuck it on top of his car, drove up to the front room of where we lived around the corner from Penny Lane (in Liverpool) and I started playing... you couldn't dream 15 years later I would be world champion," he said.

Parrott can vividly recall waking up for the second day of the final with an overnight 11-5 lead, telling himself "not to blow it".

"Unbelievable to think it's 20 years ago. It's like someone has flicked a switch. Winning at the end was such a relief," he said.

"To finally get over the line and be given the cup and see everybody who was important to me there at the end, I think they were probably more relieved than I was."

Parrott has left the game at a time when sports promoter Barry Hearn is trying to shake up snooker by introducing events with shorter formats to captivate fans and make the sport more popular with television audiences.

These have included the inaugural Snooker Shoot-Out in Blackpool in January, featuring the world's top 64 players in one-frame knockout matches of no more than 10 minutes.

"Putting a few of those (new) events in does not do any harm. A lot of people thought the one in Blackpool was good fun, the players thought it was good fun," said Parrott.

"A few of them in a season lightens it up and doesn't in any way harm the game. But I wouldn't want to see every tournament like that and neither would they."

The problem for Hearn, Parrott said, was to attract new sponsors to a sport that two years ago former world number one and three-times world champion Ronnie O'Sullivan said would continue in "terminal decline" unless it was revamped.

"He (Hearn) has got a problem over the next few years because at the moment the calendar is saturated but it's saturated with a lot of smaller events," he said.

"The bottom line is that he needs to get more sponsors in."

Parrott said it was vital that countries like China, where snooker is hugely popular and a permanent stop on the tour with tournaments in Beijing and Shanghai, continued to produce world class players like world number four Ding Junhui, one of the favourites to win a maiden world title in Sheffield.

Ding is the only Chinese player in the world's top 20 but up and coming players like 27th-ranked Liang Wenbo are pushing towards the top 16 while others such as teenager Zhang Anda, who beat Parrott in the qualifiers for the 2010 world championship, represent the future of the game.

"They have good players and I hope they continue to produce them because a lot of countries drop off," Parrott said.

"For example, snooker was very popular in Thailand when James Wattana was number three in the world (in 1995).

"When he dropped away from the rankings, so did their interest a little bit."