There are certain sports in which competitors meet with extreme regularity. Tennis, basketball, All Weather horse racing. That in itself is almost guaranteed to throw up fluctuating results.
Darts is probably the code in which repeat fixtures occur more than any other. So it’s only natural that results will flip flop in matches. The thing is, tungsten throwing is a lot more technical than naysayers and knockers or willing to admit.
Due to the aforementioned technicality, players often feverishly trifle with their equipment. Which, ironically, though it’s meant to improve their efficiency, often has the exact opposite effect.
Now, there’s no player more meddlesome with his darts than Peter Wright, yet the colourful Scot always manages to remain competitive. In contrast, you’d nearly wonder have some of his contemporaries been messing with their darts such is the way their form has dissipated so dramatically.
With Gerwyn Price, at least there’s an evplanation in that the firey Welshman has been struggling with a wrist injury. In the case of Gary Anderson and Michael Smith, the deficiencies aren’t as easily explained away.
This corner cannot entertain the idea that Anderson has regressed to such a point that he can’t compete at the highest level. As for Smith, the fact is that he absolutely deserves to be in the game’s top realm but his inability to produce his undoubted brilliance on a more regular basis is the only thing precluding him from annexation of some of the sport’s biggest gongs.
The thing is,, just as was written about other sportspersons earlier this week, the likes of Smith and Anderson haven’t just become bad players overnight. And if the class is in there – which it undoubtedly is in the cases here – it will find its way out.
As it did when Smith won a pulsating encounter with Michael Van Gerwen early on the card (6-5) before the former was just edged out of another belter by a man who has made the Cazoo Premier League his own in the last couple of seasons, Jonny Clayton.
However, last night they all had to play second fiddle to ‘The Rockstar’ Joe Cullen. The Bradford man has always been possessed of the ability to be every bit as good as the best in the game.
Since the turn of the year, though, he has taken his game to a totally new level. And there could scarcely be a better illustration of exactly that than last night when – en route to claiming another nightly title – Cullen took care of Clayton, Peter Wright and Gary Anderson.
As a result of which everything remains wide open with two rounds remainig.