World ranking: 18
Last five seasons: 16-18-21-13-7
Date of birth: 02-05-62
Lives: Oxshott, Surrey
Turned professional: 1980
Ranking tournament victories: 9
Last season’s prize money: £144,365
Career prize money: £3,792,574
Highest tournament break: 147

Six times an Embassy World Championship runner-up, no one has experienced more Crucible heartbreak than Jimmy White.

So it says a great deal for his character that he keeps coming back for more.

The ‘Whirlwind’ has been involved in some epic matches at Sheffield, notably when he lost 16-15 to Alex Higgins in the 1982 semi-finals and recorded a 13-12 victory over Stephen Hendry in the second round in 1988.

The closest he has come to winning the game’s most glittering prize was in 1994 when he lost 18-17 to Hendry in the final.

Everyone watching - including the holder - believed White would be champion until he failed to pot a black in the deciding frame with the victory ceremony beckoning.

Hendry, in fact, has beaten him four times in the final and came from 14-8 behind to triumph 18-14 in 1992.

Steve Davis (1984) and John Parrott (1991) are the other two players to have denied White the crowning glory at the Crucible.

But despite those defeats, the father of five remains the ‘People’s Champion’ and he is still one of snooker’s biggest crowd-pullers.

White became only the second player to compile a maximum break in the televised stage of the world championship in 1992, his 147 coming in his first round match against Tony Drago.

Youngest world amateur champion in 1980, he has won 22 major professional titles - nine of them ranking tournaments - during his career.

They include the 1984 Benson and Hedges Masters and 1992 UK Championship.

Matthew Stevens ended White’s world championship hopes at the quarter-final stage in 2000 and the result meant that for the second time in his career, the Londoner dropped out of the game’s elite top 16.