We will find out which two men will compete for the Sid Waddell Trophy in the final of the PDC World Darts Championship on Wednesday evening when the two semi-finals take place inside the Alexandra Palace in London on Tuesday night.
Just one former champion remains in the draw and overall we have a couple of seeds and a pair of unseeded players battling it out in what could be a special 36 hours or so for one of the four men left in the tournament.
Rob Cross vs Luke Littler
The opening semi-final will be the one which grabs all the imagination and attention as the one remaining former winner in Rob Cross takes on a player who is two wins from being the youngest world champion the sport has ever seen in Luke Littler.
Littler has been fantastic in this tournament so far, writing his own scripts with some brilliant performances, all delivered with an assurance and a confidence that is way beyond the 16 years he has been on this planet for. The two question marks over him come in the form that the only top 25 player he has met to date was Andrew Gilding and he was grossly out of form coming into the event. He can only beat what is in front of him, and he has done that emphatically, but the question is whether he can beat an established star and whether he can come out on top in a much tighter match and we are surely going to get the answers here. Cross is a former winner of the event, who like many champions of this fine tournament has gotten better with every match and worse still for Littler there might be a sense within Cross that he is free rolling now having come back from 4-0 down to beat Chris Dobey 5-4 in the quarter final, surviving a match dart along the way. The lowest set average Cross had against Dobey was 96.4 but from 0-4 down he reeled off set averages of 105.2, 98.4, 101.8, 105.1 and 102.1 and that is world class darts at any time let alone with his back against the wall. Contrast that to Littler who was frontrunning against Dolan, while three of the sets were in excess of 100, there were two sets below 96 and earlier in the competition he had worse sets than that. I’m just not convinced that Littler will deliver these insane numbers under pressure whereas Cross has not only shown he can do that when he needed it the most but he can maintain it for long periods. I think Littler has been great for the tournament and a real breath of fresh air but I think his run ends here.
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Scott Williams vs Luke Humphries
The second semi-final sees two men looking to make the World Championship final for the first time meeting when Scott Williams looks to build on defeating Michael van Gerwen in the quarter final when he takes on Luke Humphries.
Humphries went into the tournament as the favourite to win the title and he is two wins away from justifying those odds. He laboured his way through the early rounds but looked as good as at any stage in the event in beating Dave Chisnall in the quarter final and if he has two more performances like that in him then he could very well be a world champion on Wednesday night. Williams merits respect though. His win over van Gerwen was no fluke. He was the better player throughout the match and when many would have expected him to fade at the finish line, he grew stronger and played his best darts in that moment. You sense he hasn’t come this far to fold tamely now and I expect a real challenge from ‘Shaggy’ here. Whether Williams is good enough to win here I’m not sure, Humphries has been the best player in the world in the last three months, but their two meetings in 2023 saw Williams win 6-5 and Humphries win 6-4. That suggests this can be closer than the odds suggest so over 8.5 sets will do me in this one.
Tips
Back R.Cross to beat L.Littler for a 3/10 stake at 2.20 with BetVictor
Back S.Williams vs L.Humphries – Over 8.5 sets for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Bet365
