Gray picked to play for Great Britain in World Cup

Gray (45), the resident professional at Bourne Snooker Centre, will form the Great Britain B team alongside London’s Imran Majid.

And they’ll be battling it out alongside 31 other pairs representing 31 countries. The event is taking place at the Morningside Arena in Leicester and as hosts Great Britain are allowed to enter two teams.

The Great Britain A team will consist of Scotland’s Jayson Shaw and England’s Chris Melling.

The event, run by Matchroom Sport, has a prize fund of $250,000 with $60,000 going to the winning pair. It will be played from June 25-30 and every match will be shown live on Sky Sports.

Gray’s first match is against Chile on June 25 and he will go into the tournament in great shape. He is currently ranked number one on the GB9 Ball Tour and number five on the Euro Tour.

So far this year on the Euro Tour he has placed third in the Estonia Open, fifth in the Romania Open and the Holland Open and ninth in the Italian Open. In the two GB9 Ball National Tour Events he finished third and first.

It will be Gray’s fourth appearance in the World Cup and he twice finished runner-up with Blackpool’s Daryl Peach in 2008 and 2015. He played with Darren Appleton in 2016 and they lost in the first round and with Imran Majid last year when it was in China and they lost in the second round.

China are the holders of the trophy.

Countries competing: China, Great Britain A and B, Chinese Taipei, Germany, Philippines, Austria, Spain, USA, Holland, Finland, Japan, Russia, Canada, Greece, Poland, Albania, Australia,Czech Republic, Estonia Italy, Malta, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, France, Hong Kong, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Croatia, and Brazil.