JOHN WHITE, Scotland’s Australian-born world No 3, won the first Prince English Open Championship at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, yesterday with a 15-11, 7-15, 15-13, 15-11 defeat of Jonathon Power, Canada’s Commonwealth champion, that owed as much to the overview of the referee, Peter Kramer of Sheffield, as to the strength of his performance.
In a wonderful encounter, the match was promisingly poised at 12-8 in the third game after 50 minutes of high-paced, all-court action when the referee suddenly intervened with a conduct stroke against offensive language he claimed to have heard from Power, who responded plaintively to the penalty. “That rally is about as good as I can play and then you do that to me,” Power said.
Later in the same game,