Cue the revolution

At London's O2 on Saturday, a sporting revolution was taking place.

More than 30 years after snooker's world championship was first televised, creating a pantheon of legends who dominated our screens in the 1980s and 1990s, the sport was brought kicking and screaming into the 21st Century with the spawning of an exciting new format.

Power Snooker is the rebellious son of this venerable old timer of the sporting world, billed by its inventors as 'an innovative and explosive re-working of the traditional game'. It is intended to do for snooker what Twenty20 has done for cricket.

There are nine reds on the table, rather than the usual 15, and every match is finished after 30 minutes of play (plus the usual ad breaks between 'racks' - this was on ITV4 after all). Winning frames is irrelevent - it's all about the total points scored at the end of the half hour. One of the reds is the 'powerball' - it's worth two when potted but, more importantly, triggers a two-minute 'powerplay' when every ball is worth double points. What's more, any balls sunk when the cue ball is in baulk (known in this format, inevitably, as the 'powerzone') are worth double - quadruple if potted during the powerplay.

To the traditionalists, the basic premise probably sounds horrendous, an insult to the many greats from the past, and those who love the hushed tension of the 'proper' game. Despite being in my mid-20s, I count myself among those traditionalists, and have both the desire and the patience to sit through entire test matches or two-week snooker World Championships. I even managed to stay awake during the Peter Ebdon-Graeme Dott final of 2006. There's probably a support group for those of us who achieved that.

But Power Snooker captivated me and, it seems, the crowd at the O2, who imbibed throughout the day and were allowed to shout and sing as much as they liked ("Ding Junhui, my Lord, Ding Junhui" - I kid you not). The eight-player tournament was won, predictably, by Ronnie O'Sullivan, the chief flag-waver of the new format, who blitzed Ding in a one-sided final.

The whole affair, with its showbiz window-dressing, reminded me of the ending of the pretty much forgotten Britflick Blackball, where a young, rebellious and outrageously gifted player is used to rebrand and repackage the usually sedate sport of bowls. Paul Kaye's 'bad boy of bowls' was loosely based on the real-life story of Griff Sanders. In this instance, with life perfectly imitating art, it's Rocket Ronnie who is the poster boy for this turbo-charged version of snooker.

Some of the purists may sneer at the forced glitz (the identikit, casino-style 'Power Girls' who walked the players to the table was a shameless and, to be honest, failed ploy to inject some form of 'sex appeal'), but the action on the table was captivating. Events like this will surely act as a 'gateway' format for the younger generation. Power Snooker will pull 'em in - and, World Snooker chief Barry Hearn hopes, the longer game will reap the benefits.

A couple of bugbears - I actually think the 20-second shot clock could have been reduced to 15. The speed of the action meant no players ever got close to a time penalty and 20 seconds is actually quite a long time when you count it down. Also, the miss rule is completely out of place in this format - it may help one player rack up the points, but it slows the game down if the referees (in this tournament the brilliant Michaela Tabb and Patricia Murphy) have to re-spot balls.

The revolution will not be televised, Gil Scott-Heron wrote. He obviously never envisaged Power Snooker.