For decades fans of darts have had to endure tedious questions about whether it is actually a sport. These days a more pertinent question may be: “Is it the best sport in the world?” Right here, right now, no other sport has the same stratospheric standard, unpredictability, characters and ceaseless dramatic tension.
This surely is the second golden age of darts, three decades on from the days of Eric Bristow, John Lowe and Jocky Wilson. Now it’s time for the yearly showpiece: the World Darts Championship, a tournament that turns adults into children and makes Christmas almost as exciting as it was when you still believed Santa had successfully worked out the logistics of going down every chimney in the world in just a few hours.
Darts has changed significantly since the early 1980s. There is no longer the smell of Embassy No1 wafting out of your TV and the only chasers the players have on stage are Evian or Volvic. When Anderson won the world championship last year he celebrated with a coffee.
Although it is serious business on stage, the drunken boisterousness of the crowd means the feel of a sporting stag do remains. It will soon be returning to its spiritual home, Las Vegas, as part of the World Series. There are also successful events in Japan, Dubai and New Zealand.
This year the world championship will be bigger than ever – more sessions of play, more ticket sales, more prize money (£1.5m in total, and £300,000 for the winner). More than half the total of 66,000 tickets were sold on the first day in July.
“You can win 300 grand for 15 days’ work,” says Wayne Mardle, the Sky Sports commentator who reached the semi-finals of the worlds four times. “The vision that Hearn had when he took over has been realised. There are so many reasons but the biggest is that the players are so good and that makes the product so sellable.”
The standard of play is reflected in the dramatic increase in the players’ averages. It’s not long ago that only Phil Taylor averaged over 100 on even a semi-regular basis; now it is the norm in the big games. Michael van Gerwen has won his last 21 matches and averaged over 100 in 20 of them. Even Kyle Anderson, the world No43, managed a world record average of 134.84 in a Players Championship match earlier in the year.
Taylor’s average of 111.21 against Shayne Burgess in 2002, still the highest in a world championship match, could easily be broken. Van Gerwen is the likeliest such is his astonishing form of late. There are times, especially in November, when Mighty Mike looked more like Almighty Mike. He has a combination of genius and mental strength that makes him formidable and he is desperate to regain the title he lost in the semi-finals to Anderson last year.
The competition is such that, even in the form of his life, Van Gerwen is far from a banker. His dominance is not yet close to that of Taylor, who won 10 out of 11 world titles between 1995 and 2006. Since then Taylor has won three out of eight and his hunt for another, as he battles furiously against a very slow but undeniable decline over the past two years, is an almost Shakespearean story.
“I have missed my doubles this year, it has cost me,” he says. “It is not like I am playing badly. If I can up it a few per cent I will be back on top again. Look at it in perspective. At my age I shouldn’t be competing with these people. They are 20-year-old lads, really, teenagers. I am 56 next year. It wouldn’t happen in any other sport. I am quite chuffed that I am still there.”
Taylor is still second favourite with most, behind Van Gerwen and ahead of Anderson. The latter has had some poor results since winning the Premier League in May; he went out in the last 16 of the World Matchplay, the World Grand Slam and the Grand Prix.
Lewis, champion in 2011 and 2012, leads the rest of the field, with other potential winners including James Wade, Peter Wright, Raymond van Barneveld, Dave Chisnall and Robert Thornton. Wright is involved in the tie of the first round, against the 2014 world youth champion Keegan Brown, and his potential route to the title is brutal: Brown, Dean Winstanley, Chisnall, Lewis, Van Gerwen and Taylor or Anderson.
Past experience tells us the draw never works out as we think. An outsider could reach the final, like Wright two years ago, and one of the top seeds usually falls at the first and has the face on throughout Christmas as a result. It can be life-changing, and even life-defining. “Over the course of the world championship you will see players unravel or grow, and you will see personalities changes,” says Mardle. “Effectively you’re watching a soap opera, because that’s what it is, it really is.”
For the next three weeks it might be the best soap opera in the world.
Sky Sports Darts will show the William Hill World Darts Championship from 17 December
