A World Championship at first overshadowed by talk of a rival tour and a future far away from Sheffield will end with a new champion on Bank Holiday Monday.
Kyren Wilson's Crucible pedigree means he can hardly be called a shock finalist but Jak Jones certainly can, having first qualified and then beaten two former winners, each time defying expectations.
Jones has now won six of his seven matches in this famous old theatre and underestimating him has proven a costly exercise, but this is a golden opportunity for Wilson to become a world champion and not one we expect him to pass up.
Everything appears to be in his favour. Wilson has been here before and faced the hardest test in snooker, losing to Ronnie O'Sullivan. He is a ranking winner of genuine pedigree. He didn't have to qualify. His semi-final match was done long before Jones and Bingham were fighting each other for scraps. At no stage so far has he looked like he might lose.
Wilson played 79 frames en route to the final, Jones 87 if you ignore qualifying, 30 more if you don't. And now Jones has to get himself ready for a 1pm start on Sunday, having already confessed to a lack of sleep earlier in the tournament. It is an enormous ask in what is the first ranking final of his career.
Wilson whitewashed Jones when they met at the UK Championship and if he gets off to a strong start, the final may be an underwhelming spectacle to end a tournament that has just never caught fire in the way we hoped it might.
Jones simply has to score heavier and more often when chances do come along. Should he manage to then of course there's hope of a long Monday night and even an upset, Wilson perhaps likely to feel extra pressure as the favourite. If he wilts, Jones has hinted that he might be the sort of character who proves capable of taking his opportunity.
Still, Wilson has been the player of the tournament so far and having always looked a potential world champion, now is the time.
Backing him -4.5 frames at even money is probably the sensible call but we'll invest a smaller amount in the correct score market, where the expectation is that Jones struggles to get far beyond double-figures.
Wilson lost the championship match 18-8 four years ago – he might not quite manage something quite so one-sided in his favour, but 18-11 and 18-10 feels like the right area.
Posted at 0650 BST on 05/04/24
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