Luke Littler beats Luke Humphries to return to prime of Premier League darts desk
Luke Littler beat Luke Humphries in an enthralling final of night 13 in the Premier League darts in Aberdeen to return back to the top of the table
Luke Littler beat Luke Humphries to win night 13 of the Premier League darts
Luke Littler beat Luke Humphries in the Premier League Darts night 13 final in front of a sold-out Aberdeen crowd to return to the top of the table.
The world champion’s enthralling 6-5 victory over the defending Premier League champion sends him above Jonny Clayton by two points as Littler claimed his fifth nightly win of the tournament. Littler won the throw backstage on the bullseye and made the advantage count by holding his throw to win the first leg of the final.
The opening legs of the game continued to go with the throw, with Humphries taking out a brilliant 130 on the bull to stop Littler returning on 116. Three legs later, Littler was unable to take out the same combination, allowing Humphries to return and take out 32 to win the first leg against the throw of the match and lead 4-3.
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Humphries missed a dart at tops to move 5-3 ahead, but Littler also blinked – missing two at his favourite D10 – seeing ‘Cool Hand’ make no mistake when he returned to the oche.
Littler held through to force Humphries to serve out for the win but the defending champion was unable to keep Littler at bay as he broke the throw for only the second time in the final to send the final to a deciding leg.
‘The Nuke’ held the darts and took control with a 140 in his third visit to be the first to a finish. While he was unable to take out 155, he made a significant dent to return needing 65. Despite missing two darts for the match, he made no mistake returning to checkout D10 and wrap up a mighty fightback in Aberdeen.
Littler kicked off the night with an impressive yet unspectacular 6-3 win over rock bottom Josh Rock. ‘The Nuke’ put in a brilliant average of 105.86 but only hit three 180s and had a checkout high of 75. However, he was consistent through the nine legs and gave Rock, who also averaged over 100, no room to breathe.
The world champion then put Gerwyn Price to the sword in a 6-1 victory as Price appeared to suffer a hangover from a nail-biting 6-5 quarter-final win over Stephen Bunting.
Meanwhile, it’s been a huge night of results for Humphries after beating the two players above him in the table having started the night five points adrift of the top four and staring down the barrel of his O2 dreams being crushed.
Humphries started his night with a crucial 6-3 win over an out-of-sorts van Gerwen to close the gap to the play-off spots before defeating Gian van Veen by the same scoreline.
Humphries claimed a massive break of throw to finish off Van Veen as the defending champion took out 160 to move one leg away from victory, which he duly claimed by holding his throw.
