medium sizeIn the afternoon, before the start of what is at least the most anticipated darts match in a finalist’s life, newly crowned world No. 1 Luke Humphries was swayed from his preparations to go Answer some questions from Sky.
“The sport deserves what’s going on,” he said. “If I win tonight, it’s a good thing for the sport because the No. 1 in the world has proven his worth.” Yeah, that’s good. Try friends. Humphries may have been the game’s standout player in recent months, but in the build-up to this game, no one thought he was the game’s savior. He’s just the guy who has to answer questions about Luke Littler. After a while, he answered Luke Littler’s question.
At around 3pm, Sky Sports News interrupted its usual broadcast to bring viewers a live broadcast of Littler’s arrival at Alexandra Palace. In this way, the audience saw the young arrowsmith step out of the car, put on his coat, and face the other direction. There’s really no detail in Littler’s journey that’s too small to overlook.
From around mid-afternoon, a reporter was stationed at the St Helens Darts Academy, where Littler honed his darts skills as a child. He is occasionally asked to ask a vague contemporary of a finalist how excited they are. “It’s important to us here because he’s one of our own,” said a man named Marty. “I’m not surprised, but I’m surprised at the same time.”
There’s no point in trying to be cool. Over the past two weeks, we have witnessed something completely unprecedented, something delightful and ridiculous, something unforeseen and unimaginable. Littler was the kid who made us all kids, who made us all dream. The ratings for his semi-final on Tuesday easily surpassed the ratings for a single Premier League game that night, and to be fair, it wasn’t the most exciting example of its kind. You don’t get a goalless draw in darts. But as the concentration of the finals ramped up a few more notches, some were getting a little giddy. “He does what he wants! Free! He’s got his mind set free! In the world finals! At 16!” roared Wayne Mardle as Littler scored in the first Attempting to hit a wacky two-bull finisher in the set completely failed, and he wore a very good Luke Littler outfit and played like a well-oiled punter.
But the sport’s fortunes can change with dizzying speed, and Littler soon took a 4-2 lead. “It’s begun!” Marder shouted. “I told you this was going to be a bumpy ride. Buckle up!” Humphreys lost the sixth set in such miserable fashion that Mardell lambasted him for being mean and hopeless. Useless – “You’ve got to be more settled than this, Luke. Wow. You can literally tell the way he’s throwing the ball is not right.” About 45 seconds later he completed a glorious 170m and from that point on he barely missed a thing.
There were still some small fluctuations, bumps in the road, and in the same set, Littler’s checkout of 122 in the seventh over briefly felt decisive. “This could break No. 1’s heart. Look at his face. It’s just spiteful, dirty, dirty,” we were told. About two minutes later, Humphries won the set, and the face we see is Littler’s. “That’s probably the moment we look back on this game,” said Sky pundit Dan Dawson.
When the real moments of truth come, they’re completely obvious. Littler’s missed two-point field goal that would have given him a 5-2 lead was apparently one of those that Humphries later called “a huge turning point.” But we knew the battle was over when Littler, leading 2-1 midway through the 11th set and needing to win that set and all his other games to clinch the title, shot 58, 58 again, 45, and then It’s 60 points. Against a player who averages 103.67 per game, this stuff just doesn’t work. It was over in seconds.
Newsletter Promotion Post
After the win, Abby Davis interviewed Humphries on stage, then Littler, and then Humphries again. “All day long I’ve been thinking: ‘Buy this now because he’s going to dominate the world of darts soon’,” laughed the champion, still fielding questions about Littler. But despite conducting multiple interviews, Davis ended the night with several apparently unanswered questions, the most important of which was whether it should be “‘Cool Hand’ Luke Humphreys” or “Luke ‘Cool'” Hand ‘Humphreys’.
Meanwhile, in his final world final, the nominative determinist Russ Bray savored each of the 180 calls, each one lingering in his mouth like the smoke of a fine cigar. It was rolling inside, as if it was hopeless and could never be finished. And there were a lot of people, more than any previous final.
Bray, half a century ahead of Littler and with a voice so gruff it made Sean Dyche sound so sweet, pneumatically completed a maximum of 36 calls throughout the evening. We’ll remember this game for the young man who found a memorable way to announce himself, and perhaps for the veterans who found a memorable way to announce themselves.
