Sobriquets in sport can so often be cliches but in the case of Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins it could not have been more appropriate.

Higgins, who has died at the age of 61, played his snooker and led his life at reckless speed.

At times thrilling and wonderfully entertaining. At others hopelessly destructive.

A flawed genius, you might say, like George Best, that other Belfast boy who did not know the meaning of moderation and drank himself to an early grave.

Higgins had his problems with the drink too. A nasty drunk. A man who got into fights too copious to list and who resented officialdom.

He was fined £12,000 and banned from five tournaments for butting a referee at the UK championship in 1986.

At the 1990 world championship, after losing his first round match to Steve James, he punched tournament official Colin Randle in the stomach, an incident which came soon after he had threatened to have 1985 world champion Dennis Taylor "shot."

That was the demonic side of Higgins.

But many hooked on television snooker during the late 1970s and 1980s will also remember why the sport became the attraction which drew 18.5million viewers when Taylor beat Steve Davis way past midnight on the final black in that 1985 final.

Much of it was down to Higgins. Flamboyant, irreverent, spontaneous, dynamic. A natural potter who played on the edge of his talent. A player who put cavalier above caution. The nation of late-night snooker junkies loved him for it.

Higgins, with his body swerving style and gunslinger demeanour, dragged the staid old world of Fred Davies, Ray Reardon and John Spencer into an era where snooker stars became genuine celebrities.

He also chain-smoked his way around the table which doubtless contributed to the throat cancer he developed 10 years ago which ravaged his already emaciated physique.

By then the good days were long consigned to history. The 1972 world championship final he won at his first attempt at the age of 25 was a distant memory. So was the the 1982 final in which he beat Reardon 18-15, prompting tearful scenes as he beckoned his then wife Lynn and baby out of the audience to celebrate with him.

His snooker legacy, however, can be gauged by all the players who live to pot who followed him. Men such as Jimmy White, Ken Doherty and arguably the most natural talent of them all in Ronnie O'Sullivan. The sport's great entertainers.

They have all professed their debt to Alexander Gordon Higgins, who took to the green baize after his dreams of becoming a jockey were dashed but went on to captivate a nation and amass a £3m fortune, yet ended up hustling for the next meal in sheltered housing on Belfast's Donegall Road. A man whose meteoric rise matched his spectacular fall.

Truly, 'Hurricane' could not have been more apt.