Career
The Scot made his mark in the 1997 German Open by reaching the quarter finals and equalled his best run the following year in the 1998 Grand Prix.In a 1997/98 season dominated by Stephen Hendry, Burnett claimed two victories over the world number one as well as recorded victories over Stephen Lee and Mark Williams. He made his first appearance in the final stages of the World Championship in 1996, when he led Terry Griffiths 5–0 and 9–5 before losing 9–10. His second appearance did not come until 2009, equalling Barry Pinches' record for the longest gap between Crucible appearances.
During the qualifying stages of the 2004 UK Championship, he achieved the impressive feat of becoming the first ever player to compile a break over 147 in a professional match, in which he made a break of 148 against Leo Fernandez. After being awarded a free ball Burnett took the brown as an extra red, then added the brown again and went on to pot all 15 reds with one blue, two pinks and 12 blacks . He then potted the colours to complete an historic and remarkable 148 break. He afterwards commented "I didn’t really know how to react afterwards. At first I thought it was no big deal, but then I realised I’d made history.”
Burnett qualified for the 2008 UK Championship, losing 3–9 to his practice partner Stephen Maguire in the first round. Bookmakers ceased taking bets on the exact scoreline after a surge of bets for that result. In frame 12 Burnett had a chance to make the scoreline 4–8, missing a straightforward final black by so much that BBC analyst John Parrott suggested that an amateur player would be unhappy. The BBC's Clive Everton commented that the circumstances of the final two frames merited investigation.
The World Snooker decided to investigate the circumstances behind the result, before a formal police investigation was launched, days before Burnett met Maguire in the 2009 World Championship. Following a report from Strathclyde Police, the Crown announced that it had found insufficient evidence to justify a criminal prosecution.
Burnett qualified for the 2010 Shanghai Masters. He started in the wildcard round, and benefitted from Ronnie O'Sullivan withdrawal of the main draw to receive a bye to the second round. Burnett then beat Andrew Higginson, Mark Davis (coming back from 0-3 and 1-4), and Jamie Cope en route to his first ranking event final, where he was defeated 7-10 by world number 4 Ali Carter.
Burnett could not qualify for a single ranking tournament during the 2011/2012 season. He finished it ranked world number 39 and will need to perform well in the first three tournaments of the new season, before he loses the large amount of ranking points he gained for reaching the 2010 final in Shanghai.
Burnett did start the new season strongly as he qualified for the first two ranking events, the Wuxi Classic and Australian Goldfields Open. In Wuxi he beat Neil Robertson 5–1 in the first round, before losing to Mark Davis 3–5. In Australia Burnett defeated world number one Mark Selby 5–3, but then exited the tournament in the second round again following a 1–5 defeat to Marco Fu, with Burnett bemoaning a lack of consistency in his game.
Read more about this topic: Jamie Burnett
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