Fuelled by pizza and kebabs, ‘Luke the Nuke’ inspires darts dreams

LONDON – Darts may have its origins as a British pub game but at 16,

losing World Championship finalist Luke Littler

is still too young to legally buy an alcoholic drink.

The teenage debutant’s run to the all-English showpiece match on Jan 3 at London’s Alexandra Palace, where he lost 7-4 in sets to world No. 1 Luke Humphries after having a dart to lead 5-2, earned him a runners-up cheque for £200,000 (S$337,000) just months after his secondary-school exams.

English Premier League footballers were among the fans captivated by the story of Littler, who will rise from world No. 164 to 32 and now boasts close to 500,000 Instagram followers and 100,000 on X, formerly Twitter.

“I’ve had a message off Luke Shaw of Manchester United, Rio Ferdinand and I had a message off Gary Neville and Jonny Evans... so it’s just crazy,” said Littler, whose home in Warrington, north-west England, is some 29km from Old Trafford, before the final.

Littler’s road to becoming darts’ youngest world finalist included a 4-1 hammering of five-time world champion Raymond van Barneveld, his childhood hero and helped the sport generate television audiences in the millions.

His 6-2 semi-final win over 2018 champion Rob Cross on Jan 2 drew a peak audience of 2.32 million on TV, said Sky Sports Television, adding that it is on a par with live coverage of Premier League, League Cup finals and the Championship play-off.

The Times reported that the viewership was “comfortably higher” than that of the live Premier League match between West Ham United and Brighton and Hove Albion, which ended 0-0.

To its supporters, darts is a game of fine motor skills allied to mathematical knowledge, made all the harder at professional level by the players being cheered by on by raucous and often alcohol-fuelled crowds.

Players try to hit specific small targets while standing 7 ft 9¼ in (2.37m) from the board where the most valuable treble sections are also the smallest.

The aim is to go from 501 to exactly zero in the fewest number of darts, while finishing either on a double on the outer edge of the board or the central bull’s eye.

Each player takes turns to throw three darts, with the highest total possible 180 – three treble 20s.

Littler, nicknamed “Luke the Nuke”, hit 16 180s against Cross.

Promoter Barry Hearn, a key behind-the-scenes figure in snooker’s rise to UK television popularity in the 1980s, has labelled darts “the working man’s golf”.

But there are those who question whether the lack of athletic activity involved means darts can truly call itself a sport.

To be sure, Littler’s pre-match routine at the World Championships is unlikely to appease the sceptics.

“I don’t wake up until 12, in the morning go for my ham and cheese omelette, come here and have my pizza, and then go on the practice board,” said Littler, also known for celebrating his victories with a post-match kebab.

But this World Championship was still the subject of a feature in the Economist, a magazine known for its political analysis, on what it said was darts’ “debauched collision of fancy dress (the fans) and elite sport”.

After the final, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tweeted: “Congratulations Luke, a great win tonight. What an incredible final to end a historic championship.”

Littler is no overnight success story, however, having first played as a small boy and attending the St Helens Darts Academy from the age of nine.

“When he first came as a kid, you could see he was very special and he just got better and better,” said academy co-founder Karl Holden before the final.

“He hardly lost so we said, ‘What do we do now?’ We put him into the elite group, which is our best players, and he had just turned 10.” AFP