There is one last session of darts before Christmas and it comes along at the PDC World Darts Championship on Friday evening when the second round of the tournament gets completed inside Alexandra Palace in London.
Four more matches remain in the second round and if you thought we had already seen all the big names you would be wrong as we have the UK Open winner, The Masters champion and a former Premier League winner all in action on a tasty looking night of darts.
Martin Schindler vs Martin Lukeman
The opening match of the night sees the German number two Martin Schindler looking for a first win on the Alexandra Palace stage at the fourth attempt when he goes up against Martin Lukeman who ticked that box when he came through in the first round earlier in the week.
There wasn’t a huge amount that was convincing about the win Lukeman achieved against the Japanese qualifier Yamamoto in the opening round but when you consider it was his debut on this stage and he had all the pressure of expectation of dominating the game on his shoulders. I would expect a much better performance from a man who has reached a European Tour final and qualified for all the TV majors since. Schindler is improving all the time. His ranking suggests that and some of his numbers on the tour have been very good but he hasn’t really cracked it on the TV yet, although there were signs at the recent Players Championship Finals that he might be coming good. This one has the look and the feel of a pretty nervy encounter about it and those are the ones I don’t really like getting involved in.
Danny Noppert vs David Cameron
The second match of the evening sees the UK Open gracing the tournament with his entrance as Danny Noppert takes on the Houdini man of the opening round in David Cameron, who came from a mile back to see off Ritchie Edhouse.
That showed us two things. The first being that if he is allowed to hang around the Seniors Masters champion will take advantage of it but it also shows that he isn’t likely to be at the level of Noppert unless the Dutch ace isn’t on top of his game. Noppert has made the third round here in the last three years but he comes to the tournament in the top 10 in the world now and with a PDC TV title under his belt. He made a world final at the Lakeside so there is no issues with him and set play so I expect the Dutch star to come through this encounter. He will have seen all the leading seeds go out of his mini section of the draw and will know the path to the quarter final has been opened right up so I expect to see Noppert on top of his game. If he is he’ll have too much here but he’s my outright pick so I’ll leave him win rather than chase a short price.
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Jonny Clayton vs Danny van Trijp
The highest ranked player on show in the evening is Jonny Clayton and he will be involved in the third match of the night when he takes to the stage to take on the Dutch youngster Danny van Trijp who was fairly impressive against Steve Beaton in the first round.
Clayton came into this tournament last year as one of the favourites to win the title but he ran into Michael Smith at the wrong time. Not so many are talking up his chances this year, largely because of a much quieter year in the majors in 2022, and that might prove to be a help to the Welshman rather than a hindrance. He’ll have to hit the ground running though because there was a lot to like about van Trijp in his first match. He averaged over a ton in the scoring phase of the legs and although he’ll need to improve his finishing to live with Clayton, with a match on the stage and his debut out of the way there is no reason to think that won’t naturally happen. I sense this might be closer than it looks. Clayton had trouble getting rid of one talented youngster in his first match here last year when he edged Keane Barry out and something similar could come along here. It is the 180s I like here though. The line is 6.5 so even in a 3-0 win for Clayton we only need a 180 per set from each and one on top. If this does go longer we won’t even need an average of one 180 each per set. Van Trijp hit four in 13 legs in the opening round while Clayton is no mug in the 180 department. I expect the line to be covered here.
Joe Cullen vs Ricky Evans
The last of the second round matches sees The Masters champion and Premier League finalist Joe Cullen on show when he takes on the entertaining Ricky Evans who could be a danger should he have the best version of his game with him.
You have to say the record of Cullen here is very ordinary. It took him an absolute age to come past the second round but he finally did that in 2021 when he ended up going to the last 16 before Michael van Gerwen dumped him out in that epic deciding set contest and he lost another deciding set in the third round last year when Martijn Kleermaker rose his game to beat him. Evans himself has run into van Gerwen at the wrong times here but he generally performs well on this stage and I fancy he’ll go well here. This has the whiff of an upset about it because of Cullen’s largely indifferent record here but I’m not sure I want to be putting my money down and rely on some consistency from Evans. I’ll watch this last game before Christmas.
Tips
Back J.Clayton vs D.van Trijp – Over 6.5 180s for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with William Hill
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