Barry Hearn, the man with more fingers in more pies than Mr Kipling, has been confirmed as the man to lead snooker into a new decade and breathe fresh life into the sport, which has been in serious decline for a number of years.

Hearn, who chairs the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC), Leyton Orient Football club and promotions company Matchroom Sport, has promised a “fresh approach” to snooker.

“There’ll be more formats. I’ll try to be innovative and creative. The patient is not dead – it just needs waking up” said Sir Rodney Walker‘s successor.

Hearn is no stranger to snooker and already runs the Premier and Champions Leagues events, but he admits that the current state of the sport is a “mess”.

“I’m looking at the books now, I’m meeting the people. It’s a bit of a mess. In 10 years, an £8m-a-year circuit on snooker has gone down to £3m, while darts had a £500,000 circuit that has gone over £5m.”

“You look at the current snooker scene and ask how we put that smile back. The whole thing is looking tired around the edges now” commented Hearn.

However, the new man in charge has several plans up his sleeve to boost the dwindling TV audiences and make snooker popular again – “I will deliver. Everyone associated with the game has got to pull in the same direction. If they don’t, they’ve had it. Maybe it needed an old bugger like me to come back, remember what it was like, what we did right and wrong in the early days and to say, “Come on, we can do this”.”