LONDON, April 28: While sports icons David Beckham and Ian Thorpe join the celebrities and dignitaries inside Westminster Abbey for Friday’s royal wedding, cricketers and snooker players will be trying to ignore the hoopla and carry on with their jobs as usual.

Just when Kate Middleton arrives at the abbey at 11 a.m. for her marriage to Prince William, the first ball will be bowled — weather permitting — in the third day of the county cricket match between Middlesex and Surrey at Lord’s, a short underground ride away in northwest London.

By that time, play will have been under way for an hour in the televised second session of the first semifinal of snooker’s world championship, featuring Judd Trump of England and Ding Junhui of China, in the northern English city of Sheffield.

The British government is predicting a global television audience of 2 billion for the royal wedding but Trump, snooker’s new sensation, won’t be tuning in. “It’s not too much of a disappointment to miss it,” he said.

Friday is a national holiday for the wedding, but cricket and snooker have refused to change their schedules for the occasion.

“It was never a consideration to cancel the fixture,” Middlesex spokesman Steven Fletcher told The Associated Press. “It was more a case of embracing the royal wedding than anything else. We are actually hoping for a bumper crowd.”

To satisfy royal enthusiasts, Middlesex will show the wedding on giant screens around the ground as part of the club’s Royal Wedding Street Party celebrations - allowing spectators to watch Kate and William exchange vows while hearing the thwack of cricket bats echo around one of Britain’s most famous sporting venues.

The popularity of snooker has slightly dipped in recent years in Britain but the highly anticipated semifinal between Trump and Ding, two of the sport’s rising stars, has captured the imagination of fans and provides armchair viewers with a dilemma.

The BBC will provide live coverage of the wedding on its primary channel, BBC1, while the snooker will be shown live on BBC2 — and on Eurosport. “It will be interesting to see what the viewing figures are like,” World Snooker spokesman Ivan Hirschowitz said. “We’re fairly confident we’ll keep our viewers.”

Horse racing will be in full action Friday afternoon, hours after the ceremony.

Four of the five meets —Doncaster, Fontwell, Bangor-on-Dee and Leicester — have their racedays dedicated to the royal wedding. A horse called Royal Wedding, currently an 8-1 shot with some bookmakers, is scheduled to run in the 5:30 p.m. race at Fontwell.—AP