Luke Littler is the perfect reminder of why darts is the greatest sport in the world

Darts has come an awfully long way over the years, but it’s the small scale of the sport itself that helps make it so compelling.

The 7ft 9 1/4in from the oche to the board has always been the same. On a purely practical level, it’s this tiny playing area that makes it so well suited to pubs and clubs, and it’s one of the sport’s great equalisers: the vast majority of people can throw a dart that far onto a board and get playing.

Extraordinary talent and dedication is pretty important too, of course, as well as sharp mental arithmetic, but while champions can be made in the gym in other sports, three darts and a board is all you need to begin honing the art of this game.

It could well be the most accessible sport there is, but only a tiny fraction can do it as well as the people we’ve seen in Alexandra Palace during this year’s tournament.

The boozy glamour of the north London venue has given birth to great stories over the years. Fallon Sherrock, still just 29, has become an inspiration for many around the world, bursting onto the scene as the first-ever woman to beat a man at the PDC World Championships during the 2020 tournament.

The stage is set at Alexandra PalaceTom Dulat/Getty Images

There’s always a new name with a story to get behind, too. This year we saw player Cameron Menzies go viral after completing a shift as a plumber fixing sinks before taking to the stage to play his debut World Championship first-round match.

But there’s no doubt who the star attraction is at the 2024 finals. Luke Littler is still at school, and even though he might look more like a bricklayer with a mortgage than a sporting wunderkind, every early sign points to someone with world-class technique and a temperament to match.

Littler, nicknamed ‘The Nuke', has quickly become the most talked-about name in the sport and is in the final having beaten former champion Rob Cross on January 2nd.

Tom Dulat/Getty Images

He’s already beaten Christian Kist, Andrew Gilding, Matt Campbell, Brendan Dolan and the legendary Raymond van Barneveld. He will now play in the final on Wednesday evening where he will face Luke Humphries, the new world number one who won his semi-final 6-0.

We should be wary of heaping too much praise and too much pressure on someone so young, but it’s only natural that we should get excited when generational talents emerge in such a blaze of early promise.

He’ll have the nation cheering him on for the rest of the tournament, but regardless of whether he goes on to win it or not, he’s given even more momentum to a sport that grows in popularity every year, bringing more eyes to the game and reminding fans like us why we love the game.

Greatness is always just 7ft 9 1/4in away in darts. For us mere mortals it’s an insurmountable distance, but for Littler, it’s right there at his fingertips.

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