Is there one sport in the world at which absolutely anybody, able-bodied or otherwise, can have a go? If pressed to nominate an answer, yours truly would probably plump for darts. The cruel irony being that, from a personal perspective, the singed wires in the engine department up top mean that one’s attempts at pegging the tungsten manifest as having dartitus on steroids. I can grip the dart, I can go through the backswing but whichever of the television channels between the shoulders aren’t getting satellite coverage don’t send the signal to the throwing arm to release the bloody dart!
Then, however, you look at somebody like Paul Lim of Singapore and what he’s doing and you begin to ask yourself is there anything more you could do to make the throwing arm co-operate. Because on day three of the action at the PDC World Championships at the Alexandra Palace the 71-year-old defied logic, expectation and convention in chiselling out a 3-1 victory over Dutch-born Swede Jeffrey De Graaf.
Make no mistake about it, this was no fluke. Nor could it be said that the eventually defeated player poorly. As is so often the case, certainly in top level sport, it boiled down to this – one player taking their chances and the other not. Yes, Lim might have been ‘around the house and mind the dresser’ when it came to getting his scores, but, in the heel of the hunt it’s about the destination, not the journey.
The player himself won’t mind how he got through to round two and, even though Luke Humphries will of course go into their clash an overwhelming favourite, he of all people will know the threat posed by the well travelled Asian.
Lim did, after all put too much heat on Cool Hand when last they met in the Ally Pally stage. That said, even the most ardent fan of the Singaporean legend would surely concede Humphries has moved to a different darting galaxy in the interim.
That doesn’t necessarily mean blowing opponents out of the water all the time. Indeed, in his bow at this year’s incarnation of the battle for Sid, both sides of the coin were on open view.
The Leeds United fan at times displayed human frailties like the rest of us, on foot of which Ted Evetts desrvedly nabbed a set.
Mind you, if it were a case that the odds on favourite needing a boot in the backside, he got it and replied accordingly rapidly going up through the gears and produced the type of imperious stuff which has people tossing a coin as to which of the Lukes – Littler or Humphries – will be crowned on January 3rd.
Also in Saturday’s second session, the burgeoning Wessel Nijmaan sidestepped a potential Bannana skin against the obdurate Karol Sedlicek. The programme early in the day was completed by an increasingly grumpy Gary Anderson digging in and tunneling a way past the promising looking Adam Hunt.
Prior to that happening, Luke Woodhouse overcame a sluggish start to find a way past the giant and periodically brilliant Russian Boris Krcmer, Andrew Guilding overcame the emerging Cameron Crabtree and the hitherto unknown David Davies of Wales marked his Ally Pally debut with a 3-0 win.
So, up to that point, the end of play on Saturday night, there has still not been a revelation to dissuade the view that the Lukes remain on a collision course.
Sunday report to follow…
Leave a Reply