Gary Newbon: Little chance of Luke beating The Power’s world title feats

Will anyone ever beat dart legend Phil Taylor’s record 16 World Championship titles? I don’t think so, for reasons I will explain. Phil, from Stoke-on-Trent, is now 64 and has retired after hip problems. I have known ‘The Power’ for over 40 years.

Last week, we were together for two days in Birmingham, talking to staff from Volkswagen TPS and commentating on them playing darts. A year ago, few of us had heard of a 16-year-old player called Luke Littler, who reached this January’s World Championship final just before his 17th birthday on January 21.

In doing so, he changed the sport which was already putting up sell-out notices around the world for PDC events. Normally, Sky Sports gets around two million viewers for a top Premier League match. The darts final with Littler hit a record 4.5 million.

READ MORE: Chris Davies issues apology after Birmingham City 'a million miles away' at Shrewsbury

READ MORE: John Townley's Aston Villa player ratings after 2-2 Crystal Palace draw extends winless run

He is remarkable. In the last 11 months, he has won 10 major events, netting him over a £1million. He hardly practices and yet he set a new record for the number of maximums – 180 with three darts – in any major tournament when he won this month’s Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton.

The World Championships at Alexandra Palace is a gruelling event from December 15 until the final on January 3 and will be screened by Sky Sports in the last year of its present contract. Littler is 2-1 favourite while the best odds you can get according to oddschecker is 9/4.

But Barry Hearn, the darts promoter, says that Littler has changed darts and is a fabulous talent, but doubts he will break Taylor’s record or be the greatest player of all time. There are so many young players around the world playing brilliantly after being inspired by Littler.

In our latest The Barry Hearn Show podcast (I am the host of the series recorded on Spotify), Barry explains that he watched a youngster check out on a winning 136 recently – and he was only 10. Our show, by the way, goes out on Thursday.

The ‘Crafty Cockney’ Eric Bristow, also based in Stoke-on-Trent, lent Taylor the money to switch from working in a Potteries factory to being a darts pro.

I had seen a future in TV darts in the late Seventies and screened – in the Midlands only on ATV – the Butlins Grand Masters featuring the likes of a young Eric Bristow and the 15 other best players at the time, such as John Lowe, Jocky Wilson, Bobby George, Leighton Rees and Bob Anderson.

I had known Taylor for a long time before I joined Sky Sports in October 2004. The following January I hosted the first ever year of the Premier League of darts.

He dominated the competition, going unbeaten through the first three years and winning six of the 13 tournaments he played in. Littler has just won the Premier League this year!

Taylor dominated the sport for over three decades. He won 214 professional tournaments including 85 major titles. In 2015, the BBC named Taylor among its ‘‘greatest sportsmen of the last 35 years’’.

Taylor was an important founding member of the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) when it challenged the British Darts Organisation (BDO) in 1993. Two years later, Taylor won the first of his remarkable 16 world titles. He played in 21 world finals in all.

Taylor was relentless, winning tournament after tournament – too many to list in this column. He was a champion around the world: in Belgium, Australia, Germany, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the USA, Malta, South Africa and others!

In 2002, he hit his first televised nine-dart finish. He hit 11 of them in all – an incredible record. This list includes the first two nine-dart finishes in the same match in the 2010 Premier League final against James Wade. Taylor had 22 nine darts finishes overall. He was ranked the world’s number one player for 13 years, underlining what a darts genius Taylor was.

His main rivals were:

• Dennis Priestley. They met in five world finals with Priestley winning only one, which was the first in 1994.

• Canadian John Part, who beat Taylor in the 2003 world final 7-6.

• Dutchman Raymond van Barneveld. The 2007 PDC world final has been described as one of the greatest darts matches. After leading by three sets, Taylor eventually lost by seven sets to six in a sudden death play-off.

But Taylor always beat his rivals more times than losing to them. It was the same as more rivals came along, such as James Wade, Adrian Lewis (again, from Stoke-on-Trent) and another Dutchman, Michael van Gerwen.

Taylor was born in Burslem but has spent his life in neighbouring Stoke-on-Trent. He was nicknamed ‘The Power’ by a Sky Sports production manager, who stepped on an empty CD case of the Snap’s The Power, which became Taylor’s nickname and walk-on music. Taylor was great and so is Littler now. But will the records go?

Tuesday brings my weekly sports comment column with Utilita Energy in both the Birmingham Mail and Coventry Telegraph as well as online.