Higgins, Davis, Selby and Junhui are all contracted to Hearn's event

The newly announced Bahrain Championship could be missing four top players because of a clash of dates.

Two Premier League matches, promoted by Barry Hearn, are taking place at the same time as the new tournament.

The clash means John Higgins, Steve Davis, Mark Selby and Ding Junhui would face legal action from Hearn if they were to break their contracts.

Hearn said: "I am very disappointed and I can't understand why World Snooker hasn't discussed dates with us."

World Snooker refused to comment on Hearn's statement, but underlined their stance.

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"World Snooker is aware that the dates for the Bahrain Championship clash with one of the Premier League events scheduled for 13 November," said the statement from snooker's governing body.

"World Snooker endeavours to schedule its events as far in advance as possible to avoid clashes with other tournaments.

"Given the increasing number of the events in the calendar and time restraints in formally announcing tournaments this is becoming increasingly difficult.

"Premier Snooker League has scheduled 11 events during the 13 week period from September to November almost on a weekly basis which makes it very difficult for World Snooker to schedule a new ranking event during that period.

"As always we would avoid a clash if possible but on this occasion it has been unavoidable.

"World Snooker has communicated to players via our July newsletter that we are continuing to work towards delivering new international events and that the calendar distributed was still provisional.

"As with all of our tournaments, our members have the freedom of choice to pick which tournaments to participate in.

"World Snooker can take no responsibility for players' actions prior to the announcement of a tournament which may encumber their ability to enter."

Hearn said he was frustrated with the governing body's actions. "Our dates for the Premier League were set in April of this year following consultation with World Snooker, venues were booked and the seven competing players were contracted in May," he added.

"As the Premier League is televised live I'm afraid that we will be sticking to our dates and insisting that the four competing players on the Thursday night duly honour their contracts.

"It's a shame that World Snooker made no effort to avoid conflicting schedules and will subsequently be losing four top players from their event.

"I don't imagine that the players concerned will be too happy either."