Now we know for sure. And perhaps on some level we always suspected it, from the moment a 16-year-old kid arrived at these championships on a wave of froth and hype and good tidings and started doing whatever he wanted.
Everyone who has ever seen Luke Littler throw a dart, from Phil Taylor to his hapless beaten opponents at junior level, will have told you that this was the next giant of the sport. But sometime in the future. Not right now. Surely not now.
But at half past nine on the second evening of 2024, the future spectacularly and violently mutated into the present. On Wednesday evening, Littler will play Luke Humphries in the final of the Professional Darts Corporation world championship, and it feels inevitable, and it feels like something from an entirely different reality.
Rob Cross, the 2018 world champion, was his strongest opponent by far, the first top-10 player he had faced all tournament, the first man to really push Littler to his outer limits. And in the end he was destroyed like all the others, the score 6-2 in sets, Cross leaving the arena with nothing but a decent cheque and a funny story to tell the grandchildren.
Cross did not play badly. In fact, he played superbly: a stunning start, an average of 103, 42% on his doubles. But he simply ran into a player not just better than him but visibly, embarrassingly better than him. Littler averaged 106 and took out 47% of his doubles, but really numbers only tell the barest story here. It was the way a teenager toyed and teased one of the world’s best: going for a single-16 on 36 to leave his favourite double-10, going for a 180 on 182, taking out a double-bull finish of 132, throwing with the menace and relish of a kid who just knows, down to his very bones, that his darts can cash every cheque his hubris writes.
Afterwards, he was just a 16-year-old kid again. He gave light, diffident answers to the same light, diffident questions he has been facing all tournament. And frankly, why not? Perhaps the last person capable of putting this achievement into any kind of perspective is Littler himself, for whom 105-plus averages and otherworldly excellence are simply the norm. If you want to measure the strength of a storm, you check the historical record, you survey the destruction and levelled buildings it leaves in its wake. You don’t thrust a microphone into the breeze and ask it to explain itself.
SIMPLY INCREDIBLE! 💥
— Sky Sports Darts (@SkySportsDarts) January 2, 2024
Luke Littler is into the final of the World Darts Championship! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/zlhvVISrFb
What we can now say with some certainty is that darts has changed forever over these surreal few weeks. The 2007 final between Taylor and Raymond van Barneveld, the sudden rise of Fallon Sherrock, the greatest leg of all time between Michael Smith and Michael van Gerwen: all these moved the dial, broke new ground, opened the door of the sport to other futures. But never has a new talent announced itself as resoundingly or as thrillingly as this. Van Gerwen was brilliant in winning the World Masters at 17, but not this brilliant, not this confident, not this instantly untouchable. The average age of a world champion in the PDC era is 38. But this is Littler’s world now, and somehow everyone else in it – past, present and future – feels ornamental.
And yet. The only cloud on this seemingly infinite horizon arrived 90 minutes later, when Humphries demolished Scott Williams 6-0 with one of the most comprehensive performances ever seen on the Alexandra Palace stage. His average of 109 was the ninth-highest in world championship history, and his 18th consecutive victory ensured his ascent to No 1 in the world rankings.
Humphries has been the outstanding player in the world over the past year, a triple major winner who increasingly feels like this is his time. But Wednesday’s final will be an entirely different challenge to any he has ever encountered: a player he has never faced on the stage, a crowd that will be resolutely hostile towards him, an opponent who is still improving and who will ruthlessly punish every mistake. It’s a lot easier to look a million dollars when you’re pummelling the world No 52. It’s less easy when you know you have to find 12-dart legs simply to hold your throw.
And on a chastening evening, Cross discovered as much. He really was on it at the start: racing out of the blocks with poise, panache and power scoring. It took him until the sixth leg of the match to register his first trebleless visit, by which time Littler had already notched up six, and was behind in sets for the first time in the tournament. Littler, by contrast, was beginning to leak the odd dart into the 5-bed and complaining about a draught across the stage. It was, perhaps, the first little breach in the armour.
But such is the nerve and the talent at Littler’s disposal that he can simply throw himself back into the zone within a single visit. After Cross missed a dart at bull to win the second set, Littler coolly took out 74 to level the match, and was never behind after that. The crowd roared their little child gladiator to the stage, and they roared him off it again. And on Wednesday night they’ll be back, along with millions around the world, drawn by the irresistible aroma of a great sporting fairytale.
