Shaun Murphy explains why he missed trip to China as Judd Trump claims his first title of snooker season

Shaun Murphy has revealed he did not accept an invite to play in an invitational event in China last week because he was worried about being hit by sanctions.

Jack Lisowski and Stephen Hendry lost early on, but Mark Allen, Kyren Wilson and Mark Williams all reached the last eight in an event sanctioned by WST.

“I was concerned there would be sanctions for players that played in it, and not having the permission from WST commercially to play in these events.”

Murphy is hopeful more events in the region will be added to the calendar with the Shanghai Masters (September), Wuhan Open (October) and International Championship (November) all set to be hosted by China, the first major tournaments in the country since 2019 due to the pandemic.

“We’re led to believe that other events in the Far East will be coming on tour this season,” said Murphy.

“As a player, what we are looking for are opportunities to win tournaments.

“I think WST have taken a bit of criticism over the past season or two, which was unfair because the pandemic was unprecedented.

“And there was no real full understanding of the damage that did to the tour really, and I think we are all still coming out of that.

“Once we are back to where we were pre-pandemic, I think we can have a full comparison about where we are compared to where we were.

“Then I think criticisms will be a bit fairer. “