888.com world snooker championship 2007
Where's White?
It’s usually around this time of year the murmurs and the whispers around the nations living rooms begin.
“It’s going to be his year”.
“I’ve heard he’s being playing better than ever”.
“This time Jimmy, this time”.
Except this year won’t be the time for Our Jimmy. There won’t be a new cue action, a final hurrah or a fairy tale ending to a career blighted with should have and could have been moments.
For only the second time in 26 years Jimmy White hasn’t qualified for the 888.com World Snooker Championship.
The lad’s icon, the People’s Champion and the housewife’s favourite bit of rough will be resigned to the corridors of the Crucible as a humble spectator over the next couple of weeks.
It hardly seems fair for a player who most would regard as the most naturally gifted of his generation.
Instead Our Jimmy will be ‘suiting’ it with Stubbsy, Davis and Parrott in the BBC studios, forced into giving his two penneth on how the Ding, O’Sullivan match up pans out and padding time and livening up Graeme Dott’s early encounters.
He’ll polish off his suit and grit his teeth as players with half his talent bash balls off cushions and rattle jaws whilst Davis and Taylor prattle on about ‘that final’ and ‘those glasses’ for the umpteenth year in succession.
White was nudged out of the world’s top 32 after his first round exit at last years Championship. Jamie Burnett then brushed him aside 10-4 in this year’s qualifying. Maybe the saddest fact of it all is that it should come as no surprise to his fans.
The man once described as a whirlwind when patrolling the green baize has lost five out of six qualifiers for ranking events this season.
For Our Jimmy, the World Championship was always the one that got away. Six finals and six defeats. Four of which were to Stephen Hendry who many White fans considered his nemesis as his robotic and cold nature at the table always bore fruit when pitted against the more fluid and erratic White.
It wasn’t just the fluffed breaks and nervous blacks in those finals that made White the romantic snooker fans idol for 25 years. Some of his most special moments came earlier in tournaments; his 1982 16-15 semi-final defeat at the cue of Alex Higgins is much fabled for its drama and quality.
Then for those dedicated long suffering fans there was the deserved victory over Hendry in the first round in 1998. It didn’t bring a title to Our Jimmy but you get the feeling that with the Whirlwind there were more important things in life than championships and a bulging trophy cabinet.
Every snooker fan has their favourite Jimmy story. I remember reading in an interview how he had taken the corpse of his brother around town for a drink before they cremated him. They managed to drag his dead weight from pub to pub, ordering him pints and snacks on the way around.
Whether or not this had any basis in truth is an irrelevance. It was hilarious. Lets not forget either this was a man willing to change his name to Jimmy Brown for marketing purposes in order to help promote a certain popular brand of brown sauce.
You’re more likely to find the Whirlwind at the table in your local snooker hall rather than on your TV set these days. His personal web-blog jimmywhirlwindwhite.com chronicles his tours and adventures. It’s a stereotypically White opportunity to mix it with his adoring and dedicated fans
There are regular postings of snaps from his adventures most typically with a hoard of bleary eyed and emotional blokes who no doubt once ran around their miniature Argos snooker sets mimicking Jimmy.
In an age when sporting stars are becoming more aloof and impenetrable and more spoilt and star studded, Our Jimmy is a reminder of how things used to be.
When we loved our heroes because they were one of us, they looked like us, drank beer like us and smoked the same cigarettes as us. White had frailties and faults that were all too visible on the TV screen. There was no Max Clifford or PR exercises to save him from the pursuit of the press.
2007 won’t be the year that Jimmy finally lifts that World Championship Trophy. It’s more than likely that it won’t be next year either. But it won’t stop White fans dreaming and nor should it. Next time Jimmy, next time.
By Alex Fletcher
