Snooker: Paul Hunter can miss the whole of next season without any threat to his world ranking while he continues his battle against cancer, it was decided today.
At an Extraordinary General Meeting of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, players voted to give the board the capacity to freeze a player's ranking.
The change to the association's constitution allows the board to grant dispensations to players incapacitated by severe illness or injury to allow them to be reinstated onto the professional tour following their recovery at the position they previously held with the same number of ranking points. The resolution comes into effect immediately.
Hunter, 27, from Leeds, was diagnosed with cancer just before the 2005 World Championship. He won only one match last season, at the Travis Perkins UK Championship in York, and as a result his ranking dropped from number five to 34.
After losing 10-5 to Neil Robertson in his opening match at this year's World Championship, Hunter said: "It's been tough for me because I've not really enjoyed playing while I've been ill.
"I've been in pain but I've just had to give it a go to try to keep my ranking up. Next year I will try to get back to where I should be."
The three-time Masters champion had been due to play a qualifying match for the Northern Ireland Trophy — the first ranking event of the new season — in Prestatyn next Monday but today's decision has spared him from that.