Jimmy White admits he has a "burning ambition" to qualify for the World Snooker Championship despite flirting with the danger of losing his place on the tour next season.

More Stories

• Hendon: Race for the Crucible
• On this Week: Ranking first for Carter
• Then and Now: Neal Foulds

White began the year ranked 56th in the world but defeats in the Welsh Open and China Open qualifiers have left the 47-year-old languishing in the lower reaches of the provisional rankings.

The six-times finalist goes into the qualifying rounds for snooker's biggest tournament needing to win three matches to reach the Crucible.

The Whirlwind plays his first match at the English Institute of Sport, Sheffield on March 3 against Patrick Wallace or Mark Boyle, and would then have to beat 1997 world champion Ken Doherty and 2009 Welsh Open runner-up Joe Swail to progress.

And former world number two White insists he remains 100 per cent focused on Crucible qualification despite his plummeting world ranking.

"I'm not thinking about that because I'm just concentrating on getting to the Crucible," said the crowd favourite from London. "It's my burning ambition to get there.

"The last few weeks have been painful for me. I played in the Masters and I was over-whelmed by the support I got. But the table was faster than what I am used to, I couldn't settle and the nerves got to me.

"Then in the Welsh Open qualifiers I was 4-0 up on Ian McCulloch, he made an amazing clearance and came back to beat me 5-4 on a respotted black.

"And in the China qualifiers I was 3-1 and 74 points up against Xiao Guodong, but ended up losing 5-4 again.

"I was devastated by those two results. I've been practising five or six hours a day."

White's confidence has since been buoyed by an exhibition event in Grimsby in which he made a 147 maximum break and a 146 in the last two frames.

"That was a special night and it shows that I'm hitting the ball well, added the former UK and Masters champion. "I just need to take some form into the world qualifiers."

The World Snooker Championship qualifiers run from February 26 to March 9, with former champions Steve Davis, Graeme Dott and John Parrott also fighting for a spot in the Crucible line-up.