Judd Trump urges snooker chiefs to make key change to the sport to 'keep the excitement'

Judd Trump has urged snooker chiefs to make a change to the ranking system, describing it as 'probably not a fair system' in its current guise compared to other sports.

Trump is the current world number one heading into the inaugural Saudi Arabia Masters, which began earlier this week.

The 35-year-old reached the final in the one ranking event he has already competed in this year, losing 10-8 to Kyren Wilson in the Xi'an Grand Prix in China.

That meant the reigning world champion closed the gap to Trump at the top of the world rankings, with just £25,500 in prize money separating himself in third and Trump in first. Mark Allen is in second place.

The snooker rankings work based on a two-year system, meaning points from each event from the most recent two seasons of competition count.

That means players are always defending prize money they won two years ago in any tournament - except for those that are being held for the first time, such as this week's event in Saudi Arabia.

With £500,000 prize money on the line in Riyadh, it therefore means that, theoretically, anyone down to Shaun Murphy in seventh could end the week as world number one if they win the Saudi Arabia Masters tournament this week.

And speaking exclusively to SPORTbible before his first match at the event, Trump said he hopes that the ranking system can be changed to promote more excitement and fairness for all players across the entire season.

He explained: "I'm not a huge fan of the ranking system, just because of the way the champion in this tournament now is going to kind of dominate.

"I don't feel the rankings are very true. I feel there's a lot of tournaments I've won in or been very consistent and only just got to number one, which I feel like maybe I should be a bit further in front than what it is.

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"There's some drama for this week, in that whoever does well is going to win and become number one. But then it is just going to peter out a little bit because this event is so big compared to the rest, it's going to take someone the whole season to try and get the money back.

"So I definitely think more needs to be done to keep the excitement throughout the year.

"The chopping and changing for number one at the moment is kind of, whoever wins Saudi, whoever wins the worlds, is going to be number one, which is probably not a fair ranking system compared to a lot of the other top sports that don't carry so many points based on one tournament."